If I Knew You Then: Part 4
by Ruchira
Summary: AU. The 4th and final installment of the "If I Knew You Then" series. Years after B'Elanna Torres left Starfleet Academy, she and Lt. Tom Paris meet again in the last place either would have expected. P/T.
1. Chapter 1

**If I Knew You Then: Part 4**

_Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own anything having to do with Star Trek. And I was so hopeful, too._

_Summary: It's an AU story, and since this is Part 4, so it probably follows Parts 1-3. __You should probably read those if you want this to make any sense. The whole series is inspired by a line in _Day of Honor_, as I've explained in the summary sections of the previous three parts. Unlike those three installments, though, this one doesn't take place over a year or three; rather, it is the events of _Caretaker_, the first episode of _Voyager_, as they would have happened if they happened in my alternate universe where Paris and Torres had met while they were both at Starfleet Academy. And I hate to disappoint, but this is the final segment of this four-part series. If I ever switch back to writing Trek fanfiction (I'm currently hooked on NCIS and have a different pen name for those stories), maybe I'll write a fifth section, but for now, this is it. I hope it comes to a somewhat satisfying conclusion for you (but that is several chapters away, so let's go with suspension of disbelief for now and pretend it'll last forever...)_

_A/N: Sorry the first chapter is so short. The second one is a bit long, so I guess that makes up for it._

* * *

Captain Kathryn Janeway, the soon-to-be captain of the _USS Voyager,_ ran her hand against the back of the ready room chair, not quite ready to sit in it yet. _My chair_, she told herself, _it's my chair, on my ship…_ The thought almost made her giddy, almost as much so as when she had been given her first command. _But that time, it wasn't a brand new ship, and I wasn't the inaugural captain of it_. She still couldn't believe her luck.

She sighed as she resigned herself to the work that still had to be done, and sat in that very official looking chair for the first time. _Very nice_, she thought appreciatively, running her hands along the arm rests. _This I could get used to_.

She was still smiling as she brought up her messages on the monitor in front of her, but as she began to read, the smile began to falter. "Damn it," she muttered.

Almost a year ago, knowing that _Voyager_ wouldn't be ready for launch for quite some time, Lt. Tuvok, her chief of security and one of her closest friends, had taken an assignment infiltrating one of the Maquis cells that Starfleet had been trying unsuccessfully to keep an eye on. That cell, under the command of former Starfleet Lt. Commander Chakotay, was known for attracting former Starfleet officers and people similarly trained, and it showed in their tactics and movements. They were ruthless, but even more frightening to Starfleet command and the Cardassians, they were careful to the point of near-paranoia. Nobody knew where they hid, nobody knew when they were going to strike next; their crew manifests were even somewhat of a mystery. It had taken them awhile, but they had finally gotten Tuvok in and accepted by Chakotay. Over the last few months, the information he had gotten them proved invaluable; one report of an upcoming raid resulted in the capture of three Maquis crewmembers—one of which was a former Starfleet pilot—after they took off with medical supplies from Deep Space Four. He had also gotten them somewhat-complete crew manifests and background information, which Starfleet Intelligence was using to try to figure out how Chakotay attracted his crew members and how they could stop him in the future.

In the seven months Tuvok had been with Chakotay's cell, he had never missed an update, was never late on getting information through the channels to the proper people at Starfleet Intelligence—until now. He had missed the primary contact time, and then missed the two backups that were set up in case he was ever unable to contact his handlers when he was supposed to. For all intents and purposes, Tuvok was off the grid, and nobody knew where he was or how he was. Best case scenario, he was being watched too closely by Chakotay to get a message out. Worst case, they had discovered who he really worked for and killed him. Janeway sincerely hoped for the former.

With a heavy sigh, she turned off the monitor and leaned back in her chair as she tried to think of her options. _Voyager_ was going to be the most advanced ship in the fleet when she was done—new warp drive system, bioneural gel packs that improved processing speed, some of the best weaponry that Starfleet had to offer—but she wasn't done. If Janeway had her way, she would take the ship out of drydock that afternoon and head for the Badlands to find her friend, but as of the last engineering update she had come across, she wouldn't go far without a warp drive. She knew there had to be a way to get to him; she just wished she knew what it was.


	2. Chapter 2

"Kathryn! This is a surprise! Come on in, we're all out back on the deck. Owen was about to put steaks on the grill for dinner. Do you want one?" Alicia Paris asked as she led the Starfleet captain through the house toward the back door. "By the way, how is your mother doing? I keep meaning to have lunch with her, but something always comes up with one of us before we can ever sit down and actually make plans."

"She's doing well," Kathryn Janeway replied with a grin, marveling at how well Alicia was handling the impromptu visitor. Then again, that was very Alicia Paris; Janeway didn't know if anything could catch her off-guard or ruffle her feathers. It was a requirement of the unofficial club of the wives of Starfleet admirals, a club Gretchen Janeway could also claim membership in. "She's keeping busy with the grandkids."

"Ah, yes, a feeling I know well," Alicia said with a laugh as they stepped out onto the deck. "You have a niece and a nephew, right?"

"Yes, they're four and almost one, and quite a handful. I think my sister brings them to my mother's just to give herself a break."

"_Another_ feeling I know well," Alicia said, laughing again. "Speaking of which, Lissy and her family is here, and so is Tom." She chuckled. "I can't figure out which is more of a handful—the grandkids or Tom."

Janeway suddenly realized that she was interrupting a Paris family gathering, and doing so to talk to business. Alicia had always been very strict about leaving Starfleet at the office, a rule Janeway knew Owen Paris broke regularly as the kids were growing up, drilling Starfleet protocols and stories of first contacts into their heads—with that kind of pressure, it was no wonder all three joined Starfleet. Still, it was one thing for him to break the rules in his own house, another entirely for someone to come in and do so. "I really didn't mean to interrupt—," Janeway began.

"Don't worry about it," Alicia said, waving off the thought. "But I'm only going to forgive you for talking shop with my husband if you stay for dinner. It's been far too long since we've seen you."

"I've been busy," Janeway protested with a laugh, knowing that that excuse wouldn't get her far with Alicia. Sure enough, the older woman only shook her head slightly in response, but let it drop.

The Paris family hadn't changed the deck much since the last time Janeway visited, which she was sad to admit, had been more than five years before. She had just accepted her first command, and the admiral had invited his former protégé over for a celebratory dinner and to offer suggestions, which Alicia had quickly put an end to, reminding her husband that after all her training, Kathryn was more than capable of figuring things out for herself.

The deck hadn't changed, but the people had. When she was there last, it had just been the newly promoted captain, the admiral, and his wife. Now, Admiral Paris was standing at the grill, and in the backyard, a young man seemed to be playing a game of soccer with three kids. With a start, Janeway realized that it must be Tom. She didn't think she had seen the admiral's only son since he was eight, when he briefly came aboard the _Al-Batani_, back when she was a junior science officer. He had been a tow-headed little brat, managing to get in trouble within the few short hours he was there—until his father instructed one of the junior pilots to teach him about helm controls. After he left, the elder Paris had boasted his son's abilities, saying that he was a natural pilot, already capable of controlling an S-type shuttle. Almost twenty years later, the boy still had the blond hair and blue eyes that seemed to be a requirement in the Paris family, along with a tall, slender build and easy grace that he had gotten from his mother. Janeway remembered attending a roast in honor of Fleet Admiral Joshua Paris' retirement as her father's "date" when she was a lieutenant junior grade. One of the other admirals had joked that there were only three requirements to being a Paris—unbelievable talent, an almost unhealthy dose of ambition, and stunning good looks. From what she knew and saw, the younger Paris had at least two of the three qualifications.

"Kathryn," Admiral Owen Paris said in surprise when he looked up from the grill. Janeway pulled her eyes from the small game of soccer to her former mentor and smiled slightly.

"Sorry to barge in on you, Admiral," she said. "I didn't realize it would be a family night."

He waved off her concerns, just as his wife had. "It's nothing. Lissy and Jeremy have leave this week, and Tom came in from Utopia Planitia for the night to see them. Are you staying for dinner?"

"Alicia already informed me that I wouldn't be forgiven if I didn't," Janeway replied with a laugh. "And I take my steak medium well."

He smiled slightly before looking up at her again. "I read Captain Yosting's report," he said, his expression serious. "I think I know why you're here. Let's save it for after dinner."

She nodded. Captain William Yosting was Lt. Tuvok's contact at Starfleet Intelligence. It was Paris who taught Janeway about protecting her crew; she wouldn't need to explain what she wanted to do to him. She accepted a beer--in a bottle, which prompted a raised eyebrow from the captain and shrug from the admiral's wife--from Alicia before she took a seat on a lounge chair.

"Kathryn Janeway?" Janeway turned her head toward the woman's voice. There was no mistaking Dr. Elisabeth Houston; she was practically a carbon copy of her mother with her tall and slender build and platinum blond hair, fair skin, and pale blue eyes. "It's been, what, sixteen years?"

Janeway smiled slightly at the memory. Elisabeth had been a senior near the top of her class at Starfleet Preparatory Academy, one of the top secondary schools in the Federation and Janeway's alma mater. She hadn't wanted to go to the Academy, and in efforts to convince her, her father sent her to talk to Lt. Janeway in hopes that his protégé would be able to change her mind. Whatever advice the young science officer had to give must have fallen on deaf ears; despite having a position at Starfleet Academy secured, Elisabeth snuck out of the house in the middle of night shortly after graduating from secondary school and ended up enlisting in Starfleet as a medic after a few months of tending bar in Marseilles, France. "I heard you eventually made it to medical school," Janeway commented.

Dr. Houston grinned. "Three years as a medic, four years as a nursing student, three years as a nurse, four years of medical school, and now I've been a doctor for a year. Not exactly the typical route, but typical just seemed so boring. Oh, and somewhere along the way, I latched onto this guy."

"Hi, I'm Jeremy Houston," the tall dark-haired man with her offered, holding out his hand. Apparently the rule of Parises being attractive applied to those they married as well.

"Kathryn Janeway," the captain replied, shaking his hand. "I'm a friend of the family."

"Linssay, you've got to be more aggressive with the ball," Elisabeth called out in the direction of the soccer game. "Don't be afraid to kick his ankles if you have to."

The blond adolescent glanced quickly over at her mother before returning her attention to the ball. She managed to free it from her uncle's feet and sent it soaring between two of the apple trees, what they had apparently been using as a goal. "I already bruised his ego," Linssay replied with a smirk. "I think that's the only part of Tom you can hurt, anyway."

"You're going to let your daughter talk like that, Lissy?" Tom protested as he picked up a small brunette girl and hefted her over his shoulder, resulting in squeals of delight.

"Who do you think taught her?" Jeremy asked dryly. "Kids, go in and get washed up, it's almost time for dinner."

"That's quite the family you have," Janeway commented as she watched the three kids run into the house.

Jeremy Houston rolled his eyes. "Quite the handful, you mean. They're trouble, the whole lot. They're all Paris."

"You aren't exactly all that mild-mannered, yourself," Elisabeth shot back with a grin. "Enough of this trying to figure out what personality traits came from what side of the family. Let's eat."

---

"Okay, Kathryn," Admiral Owen Paris finally said after the last of the dishes had been cleared away. "You've been very patient. It must be killing you. I know how you get when you have something to say."

She smiled as she took a sip of the coffee Alicia had gotten for her. She remembered how she was when she was an ensign aboard the _Al-Batani_; in many ways, she hadn't changed. "Tuvok wouldn't miss a check-in, not if he could help it. He's one of the best tactical officers I've ever met. I wouldn't be surprised if I heard he composed some of those messages with Chakotay watching over his shoulder and not suspecting a thing." She leaned forward slightly. "I know he's in trouble, Admiral. We have to get him out."

"What do you have in mind?" Paris asked with a frown. "We don't have much to go on."

She took a deep breath. This was the time to make her pitch, and she had to make it well; Admiral Owen Paris expected the best. "I want to move up _Voyager_'s launch date," she stated. "It's the only ship in the fleet that can handle the plasma storms in the Badlands. It's smaller, faster, and more maneuverable. I talked to Commander Washington with R&D, and he says the ship can be ready for launch in a week."

"A week?" Lt. Tom Paris interrupted from his relaxed position on a deck chair. He used his beer bottle to tip up the hat that had slipped over his eyes. Janeway saw the edges of bright blue eyes study her skeptically. "No offense, Captain, but you're delusional. We're barely able to get the bio-neural circuitry talking to the warp core, and the response times from the navigational array are sketchy at best." He shook his head emphatically. "Quite frankly, I'd be considering us doing well if we had get all the wrinkles smoothed out by the projected launch date."

Janeway raised an eyebrow in surprise. "I wasn't aware you were that familiar with _Voyager_'s systems."

"Tom works for R&D," Admiral Paris stated. "He's a test pilot, been working on the _Voyager_ project since its beginning. In fact, he's scheduled to take the ship on her shakedown cruise."

Janeway smiled slightly. "Well, then, Mr. Paris, it looks like you're going to be taking her for a spin sooner than anticipated. Commander Washington has assured that he's putting Starfleet's best engineers on the project."

Tom tilted his head slightly and shrugged a shoulder before returning to his casual posture, his hat again slipping over his eyes. "Well, I've never known Washington to be wrong, so if he says a week, it'll be a week." He took a long pull from his beer. "Does this mean you're canceling the shakedown cruise?"

She shook her head. "No, we'll just be combining it with this first mission. If you can handle the Badlands, Mr. Paris, you're more than welcome to join us."

He chuckled. "Captain, I flew more difficult courses when I was still in high school. I used to compete in stunt flying. I have no problems with the Badlands."

"I'm glad to hear it," she replied with a slight smirk. The attitude hadn't changed since he was eight years old. She turned back to his father. "We have a ship that can handle the Badlands, and a pilot," she gestured slightly toward Tom. "The only problem is, the Badlands is a fairly large stretch of space and we'll be flying blind without sensors, and we have no idea where Chakotay and his cell could be. In the time that Tuvok was with the cell, he wasn't able to identify a set base of operations. He said that there were several moons and planetoids that they would use to regroup and repair, but he couldn't see a pattern to which one would be used next. Even if we limited ourselves to the places that Tuvok reported, we could be searching for months." She sighed slightly. "We have some information from the Cardassians, but not much. In fact, they're claiming that they drove Chakotay's ship into a plasma storm and it was destroyed. I don't know what we can trust from them."

Admiral Paris shook his head slightly. "I wish I knew what to tell you, Kathryn. I've been over some of that data—not much, the Cardassians and Maquis aren't my area of expertise—but from what I can see, we're not going on much. That's why it was so vital for Lt. Tuvok to infiltrate the cell in the first place."

"What about a guide?" Tom chimed in again. He had abandoned both the lounging posture and the hat and was leaning forward in anticipation. Janeway could practically see the wheels inside his head turning.

"A guide?" his father asked dubiously.

Tom rolled his eyes at his father before turning back to Captain Janeway. "Someone who knows the Badlands, has been with Chakotay and knows where he hides out."

"Mr. Paris, the reason we sent Lt. Tuvok to infiltrate Chakotay's cell is that we don't _have_ anyone who knows the Badlands or knows where Chakotay 'hides out'," Janeway explained patiently.

"What about someone who used to be with the cell?"

Janeway shook her head again. "There isn't anybody. Tuvok is the first to successfully gain Chakotay's loyalty, and nobody has ever defected. In fact, I'm not aware of anyone who has ever defected to the Federation from _any_ Maquis cell."

"What about people you've captured?" Tom countered.

His father knew where he was going. "Tom," he said with a warning tone.

"No, it could work," he said quickly. He turned back to the captain. "I know that you have at least one former Starfleet officer from Chakotay's cell at Auckland. He was with them for months, from the beginning of the movement; he had Chakotay's trust, and he flew through the Badlands on a regular basis. He knows the hiding places better than anyone."

"You seem to know a good deal about this former officer," Janeway observed.

"I should," the younger Paris countered. "He was my roommate at the Academy."

"Tom, you know Ryan's not going to agree to this," his father argued with a slight shake of his head.

"He will, if you present it right." He turned back to the captain, his eyes bright with excitement. "Ryan Addison can be your answer, Captain, as long as you're asking the right questions."


	3. Chapter 3

Captain Kathryn Janeway sighed inwardly as the guard scanned her for any hidden weapons, listening devices, or whatever else people tended to hide when they visited Federation penal colonies. After a few minutes of what seemed like overly excessive scrutiny, the gruff-looking guard closed his tricorder and nodded brusquely. "The prisoner you're looking for is in section five-beta. Would you like an escort?"

She bit back the first thing that came to mind, that she must have forgotten the way there since her last trip to prison, and simply nodded in the affirmative that an escort would be appreciated. The head guard nodded stiffly to one of the younger men standing idly by. The kid, who didn't look any older than twenty--_or maybe she you're just getting too old_, she mocked herself--indicated for her to follow him.

"I can take it from here," Janeway said as they approached section five-beta, where the prisoners were performing shuttle maintenance. Without saying anything, he simply nodded and turned back to head in the direction he came. Janeway shook her head slightly at the attitudes of the guards, then squared her shoulders and approached.

She recognized the man she was looking for from his pictures. "Mr. Addison," she said, standing at the edge of the pit the shuttle was resting in.

Ryan Addison, former Starfleet officer, former Maquis pilot, current Federation convict, glanced up from his work to find himself eye level with a pair of very shiny black boots. He recognized that high gloss; he once wore boots just as clean. He tilted his head up to find himself looking into the eyes of an attractive Starfleet captain. Well, attractive for a middle-aged woman, but for a man who had just spent the last several months in a penitentiary, that distinction was unimportant. He smirked slightly and turned back to his work, a blatant sign of disrespect that he wouldn't have even considered a few years ago. "What can I do for you, Captain?" he asked dryly, already back to his work.

"I have a job for you," Janeway replied, raising an eyebrow at a man who was no longer looking. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She told herself before she came that this would be difficult; Owen Paris had told her the same thing. His son was the only one who even believed it to be possible.

Addison laughed outright at her comment. "I don't want whatever job you could offer me, Captain," he said with a humorous tone. "My days of shining boots are over. Besides, I was terrible at it."

Janeway closed her eyes and counted to ten. "Let's go for a walk," she said.

Addison shook his head. "I have work to do." He glanced briefly up at her. "Thanks for stopping by. It's been awhile since I've had visitors. With two dead parents and a disinterest in staying with one woman long enough to even consider procreation, it's not as if there are a whole lot of people lined up for that job." He smirked again as he activated the hypospanner.

Instead of saying anything, she gestured at the guard, indicating that she wanted to talk more with the prisoner. This guard, just as gruff looking and uncommunicative as the first, walked over and nudged him. Addison glanced at him and sighed. He set his hypospanner down and climbed out of the maintenance pit. "Well, it looks like you got me now. You're wasting your time; I'm not going to be interested in whatever job you have for me."

"Maybe you should wait for me to tell you what it is before you decide that," Janeway replied as they walked away from the shuttle area.

Addison shrugged. "Well, if I don't have anything to do except listen, you might as well say what you came here to say."

The captain glanced over at him, and couldn't help but think that New Zealand had been good for him. He looked more like his Academy pictures than the shots taken from his arrest and trial. He had an almost metallic look about him: tanned skin, copper hair, brown eyes that had a slight gold glint to them. He was walking straight, his shoulders back, a defiant look on his face. The color was new since his arrest; the defiant look had been there before.

After that night that Lt. Tom Paris came up with the idea of asking Ryan Addison for help guiding _Voyager_ into the Badlands to find Chakotay and his Maquis cell, Admiral Paris had vehemently advised against it. He had known Addison since he was fourteen, had known everything that the young man had gone through since then, and he told her that even if she could convince Addison to go with her--which he doubted--he didn't think it would end well for any of them. Paris had said that Addison tended to have that effect on people.

"My security officer was undercover in the Maquis," she began. "He was last heard from as the cell he infiltrated entered the Badlands. That was over a week ago. I want to go in after him."

Addison laughed derisively. "A Starfleet ship into the Badlands? You must be out of your mind."

She smiled slightly. "You've never seen _Voyager_," she replied confidently. "Intrepid-class, bioneural circuitry, just as maneuverable, if not more so, than those tin cans you used to fly around in when you were with them."

He stopped and stared right at her. "That's all well and good, but what do you want from me?"

She paused briefly. "The cell that my officer infiltrated, that was Chakotay's cell. I understand you're familiar with him."

Addison's jaw clenched. "Yeah, you can say that," he said, his eyes narrowing. "Let me tell you a story, Captain." He was probably the only person who could make a rank sound like such an insult. "The brief story of Ryan Addison. I grew up as the privileged son to a Federation bureaucrat and his well-connected wife. They sent me to Starfleet Prep when I was in the ninth grade, and I met Tom Paris, another angry fourteen-year-old chafing against the expectations of over demanding parents. With that in common, we couldn't _not_ become best friends. When my father accepted a position as the governor of Juhraya, I practically moved into the Paris house. After we graduated from the Academy, he took a job as a test pilot and I went to the _Exeter_. It wasn't an overly exciting posting, but I was on the fast-track to command, so I didn't care much. Everything was going perfectly for everyone involved. And then the Cardassians moved in, decided they wanted Juhraya for themselves, but my idiot parents and their idiot colonist friends didn't want to give it up, and the Cardies don't share very well. They made an example out of my parents, to put it mildly, and nobody from the Federation did a single thing. I handed in my combadge and went out looking for a fight. I was ready to go out and go after those Cardies by myself, but then I met up with Chakotay. He told me he needed a pilot, and I needed a cause. It seemed like a good fit until I got caught and ended up in here." He fixed Janeway with a cold look. "I've done some pretty stupid things in my life, but joining up with Chakotay wasn't one of them. If you want someone to take you to him, look somewhere else."

She let him walk away a few steps before saying, "Admiral Paris told me you'd say that." He stopped walking, but didn't turn to face her. She walked around in front of him. "He said you're loyal, but you're a follower. You'll do anything anyone tells you. For awhile, it was fine. You had a good group of friends, your parents were good influences. But then they left for your dad's new job, and you were left alone with Tom Paris as your role model. You got in trouble, but it was just little stuff, and people looked the other way when an admiral's kid and governor's kid were involved. Eventually, when Paris wasn't around anymore, you met Chakotay, and became loyal to him." Her voice took a sharp edge. "You may think you're being honorable by protecting him, but you're just helping him hurt more people like you've been hurt. You know what the right thing is, Mr. Addison. It's not too late to do it." She slowly turned away, hoping that her words had sunk in.

They had. "What do you want me to do?"

She turned back to him. "You were with that cell for months, since it began. You know where they hid, where they go for supplies, who they spend time with. I want you to show me those places."

He thought about this for a moment. "That's it? Just stand around and point?"

She nodded. "You'll be an official Federation observer. When it's over, a recommendation goes in your file for the next time you come up for parole. You go without screwing this up, you'll be walking free again a couple of years before scheduled."

He scoffed at this. "The Badlands are the Maquis playground. No matter how good you say that new ship of yours is, if you want to see your chief of security again, you're going to need me at the helm. I'm the best pilot you could get."

The smiled that tugged at her lips was a sarcastic one at best. "Tom Paris is going to be my chief helmsman for this mission."

"I'm the second best pilot you could get." He gave an ironic smile at this. "Come on, Captain."

She shook her head. "This isn't a negotiation, Mr. Addison. You can either take the offer as I've explained it, or not at all. It's your choice."

He didn't say anything, just looked at her with that defiant look. After a moment of this, she gave a slight shrug and turned away. She had walked less than a meter when he asked, "When are you sending someone to pick me up?"

---

Alicia Paris was sipping coffee and reading the news on a PADD when her son entered the kitchen, already dressed to go. She was still getting used to seeing him in the newer Class B jumpsuits, all black except the red shoulders. It reminded her of his days as a cadet. "Do you want me to get you some breakfast?" she asked, setting the PADD down.

"I know how to use a replicator, Mom," he joked as he headed for the appliance. "Two eggs, scrambled, two pieces of bacon, and toast." The food materialized, and he carried it and a steaming mug of coffee the few meters to the kitchen table, sitting across from his mother.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Tom eating his breakfast while his mother sipped her coffee. "Oh," she said suddenly, "don't let me forget to send you off with a box of brownies. Linssay and Melanie insisted on baking them yesterday, and I thought you and Ryan would enjoy them on your trip."

He smiled at the phrasing, and bit back a sarcastic remark about how picking up his former Academy roommate from prison and escorting him to a space station hardly qualified as a trip. He decided to let his mother look at it however she wanted, and avoided the topic altogether. "You sure it was the girls who suggested it? I know how you are, always trying to spoil the grandkids with sweets and toys."

"Don't put this all on me, Thomas," she scolded lightly. "I saw you teaching Parker that magic trick last night. And I happen to recall it was _your_ idea to kick around that soccer ball the other night."

He shrugged a shoulder. "Just trying to be the good uncle. And don't give me that look," he said, waving a finger disapprovingly. "Don't expect to be seeing any Paris grandchildren any time soon."

"I didn't say anything," she said, holding up her hands defensively. "Although since you brought it up…"

He gave a heavy mock sigh and fixed her with a look of exasperation. "Don't you think you should wait for me to meet someone before you begin planning our future together?"

Alicia shrugged slightly, her face softening. "I thought you had, once upon a time."

Tom rolled his eyes, keeping them down on his breakfast. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said stiffly.

Alicia bit back a sigh and changed the subject. "About Ryan," she said, "go easy on him, Tom. None of this has been easy on him, especially seeing you become a successful officer when he failed so dramatically at it."

"I know," he said softly. "And you know I've never rubbed it in. I've never stopped considering him my friend, no matter what he's done."

She smiled and patted him on the cheek. "I know. You two have too much history for that." She rose to refill her coffee mug. "To be honest, when you guys were growing up, I always thought you'd be the one to end up in jail while he went on the fast-track to command."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom," he said sarcastically. He checked his wrist chronometer and sighed. "I've got to get going. It's almost time for me to spring my best friend from prison."

"Be careful," Alicia said as she handed him the box of brownies. "I'll see you in a little over a month. And tell Ryan I said hi."

"I will," he promised as he kissed her cheek. "I'll see you soon."


	4. Chapter 4

B'Elanna Torres glanced around at her surroundings in disbelief. "What is this, some sort of barn-raising party?" she muttered angrily to herself as she scanned the area with her tricorder. One minute, she was on Chakotay's ship, trying to get the warp core started again after his little stunt with the Cardassians; the next, she was in some sort of idyllic Midwestern setting.

"I wasn't aware Klingons had barn-raising parties," Chakotay commented wryly, his own tricorder out and active.

Torres glared at him, which he returned with a mischievous glint in his eye. Ever since they met six months before, he made it a habit to tease the half-Klingon engineer about her heritage, knowing it would never fail to get a rise out her.

"I grew up on a Federation colony," she replied stiffly. "And I spent two years—"

"At Starfleet Academy. Yes, yes, we know," Chakotay interrupted. "What we don't know is why you left. Why don't you enlighten us?"

Unwarranted and unwanted, a sudden image of a tall blue-eyed pilot with sandy blond hair popped into Torres' mind, his hair slightly longer than regulation, his boots slightly scuffed, a quirky half-grin on his face, an irreverent attitude that didn't keep him from representing anything and everything Starfleet to her. Torres frowned; where had _that_ come from? Ever since that damned spirit quest or whatever it was called that she had thought would be a good idea, her thoughts had been all over the place and made no sense to her. As quickly as it had appeared, Torres shoved the memory to the back of her mind where it belonged, and strengthened her glare on the Maquis captain. "We're Kahless-knows-where, and you expect me to tell you a story?" she asked incredulously.

He shrugged. "Well, you can always join the square dance," he said, gesturing toward the circle of holographic "neighbors" and Maquis crewmen in front of them. Not surprisingly, it was Mariah Henley and Jennifer Jackson who appeared to be leading the rest. Torres rolled her eyes. Those two were so irreverent about everything, they had been known to sing and tell jokes in the middle of fighting Cardassians.

"I don't dance," she shot back. She sighed heavily. "This is all some sort of holographic projection. If we can find the projector—"

"That would not be advisable, Lieutenant," Tuvok said sternly, appearing out of nowhere at her elbow. She stiffened. The Vulcan never failed to get on her nerves—he had a tendency to sneak up on people, listen in on other people's conversations, and _always_ called her "Lieutenant", the only one who did so. "We do not appear to be in danger at the moment. The logical course of action would be—"

"I don't _care_ about the logical course of action!" she fired back at him, all the tension of the recent battle, the strange tachyon beam, and the sudden transportation to the alien array coming out at once. "I am _not_ going to just stand here and wait for them to figure out what they want with us!"

Tuvok raised an eyebrow at her outburst. "Then what do you suggest, Lieutenant?"

"_Doing_ something!" she replied. "And stop calling me 'Lieutenant'!"

"Okay, Torres, that's enough," Chakotay finally said in that damned calm voice of his, still sounding amused at the easy flares of temper from his engineer. Torres turned her glare toward him. She would think that after six months, the novelty had worn off, but apparently not. He met her glare with a leveled gaze. "Just sit tight. Someone will come by soon enough and tell us what they want. In the meantime, maybe we should hit up those cookies and lemonade the woman offered. They can't taste worse than the Cardassian rations we've been eating for the past two weeks."

"I don't take orders from you," she retorted. It was a stupid statement and she knew it; they both knew that while she might question his orders, she would eventually follow them.

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh, I know. You're just a member of my crew as a gift from the Klingon Defense Forces. Well, I don't see any Klingon commanders around here, so in their absence, I'm in charge."

She glared at him and spun on her heel, moving stiffly away, in part due to her anger and in part from the thigh-high leather boots of her Maquis fatigues. Not for the first time, she wondered why she had allowed Jackson to replicate those instead of the more practical pair that only rose to her knees, but they were actually more comfortable than Klingon armor, so she supposed it wasn't too bad.

"Hey, B'Elanna," Seska said, moving quickly up alongside the angry half-Klingon. "I heard what Tuvok said to you. What's with him, anyway?"

"Same thing that's with every other Vulcan I've ever met," Torres replied bitingly. "It's all logic and reasoning and that damned flat affect. Drives me crazy."

The Bajoran engineer grinned. "Yeah, I know the feeling. Hey, I know Chakotay said to sit tight, but let's see what we can learn about this place. Maybe there's a transporter station or something around, and we can get the crew back to the ship. Wouldn't that just make the Vulcan look silly?"

Torres grunted. She didn't want to admit it, but it _would_ feel good to prove Chakotay's right-hand man wrong. Why Chakotay chose the stoic Vulcan as his closest confident—well, closest _work_ confident, as she was sure Seska would slyly point out—was beyond her. Must be the advanced Starfleet tactical training they had in common. "Let's start by looking for the control panel to this place. It must be some sort of holosuite or something. If we can shut down the program, maybe we can find a way out."

An almost feral glint came to Seska's eyes as she pulled out her tricorder. "Let's do it."

Torres nodded, studying her tricorder for a second. "There seems to be something in the direction of the barn. Let's go check it out."

They were about halfway toward the old-looking red barn when an older man appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. "Now where are you two girls heading?" he asked, his voice light. "You look hungry. I know there's corn on the cob back by the house."

"I'm fine," Torres replied shortly.

"What's in the barn?" Seska asked the man.

"The barn?" he asked, frowning slightly. "Not much. Some old tools, some hay. We used to have horses there, but we moved them to the stables on the other side of the house." He brightened slightly. "Do you want to go horseback riding? I'm sure I can arrange that."

The two women looked at each other and tried not to burst out laughing at the suggestion; people living on Bajor during the occupation and half-Klingons from Federation colonies didn't typically go horseback riding. "I think we'll pass," Torres said dryly. "I really want to see that barn."

"It's really dirty," he protested, even as they continued walking. "Two lovely ladies such as yourselves shouldn't be mucking around in the dirt like that."

This time, Seska did start laughing. "If you only knew," she said wryly. She paused at the door to the barn and frowned, tapping her ancient tricorder. "There's definitely something here. Come on, Torres."

"I wouldn't recommend it," the older man said in a warning tone.

"I make a habit out of doing things people don't recommend," Torres said, shoving past him. He grabbed her arm as she slid by, which would have been the worst thing he could have done. Years of Klingon combative training came to Torres in a fraction of a second, and the hand that had grabbed her arm was quickly behind his back, twisted in such a position that would have resulted in a dislocated shoulder had he been a true flesh-and-blood human.

"You leave me no choice," he said, his voice suddenly cold as he twisted away from her grasp with more force than even a full Klingon would have been able to muster. "We did want to give you some time to relax before we began, but if you're so eager, we'll just go ahead and get started." A minute later, the doors to the barn slid open, revealing the rest of the Maquis crew being led by a small army of holographic farmers with pitchforks. Chakotay saw who was already waiting for them in the barn and sighed heavily, disappointment in his eyes. Torres flushed slightly under that gaze, but before she had a chance to say anything, the back wall to the barn fell away, revealing a large room of some sort, its sharp angles and sterile lines contrasting with the Midwest farm projection. She stared into it for a moment before she felt a nudge at her back. She quickly turned to glare at the holographic man prodding her before turning and heading into the room.


	5. Chapter 5

A slow grin formed over Lt. Tom Paris' face. "Gin," he declared proudly, laying his cards on the deck of the rear compartment of the Class 2 shuttle.

Ryan Addison groaned. "Why do I bother? I can't even remember the last time I beat you at cards."

"You bother because we're stuck in the back of a shuttle without anything else to do," Paris replied, still grinning. He swept up his winnings with one hand, wishing that they were playing for something other than plastic chips. He handed the cards over to his friend and stood. "I'm going to check with Stadi, see how much longer it's going to be."

"Too long," Addison muttered. "No offense, buddy, but you're bringing back memories of Class 2 claustrophobia."

Paris chuckled as he left the rear compartment and took a seat in the co-pilot's chair, trying not to think about a conversation over dinner in the Academy Union about modifications to the Class 2 shuttle. He activated the console, more out of a desire to distract himself than to check the sensors or attempt to take over piloting. Lt. Stadi raised her eyebrows at the motion before turning to him with an amused look on her face. "Don't trust me, Lieutenant?"

He grinned back at her. "I just wanted to check our ETA."

"We're almost there," she replied, holding back a smile.

He returned that with a roguish grin. "You know, Stadi, you're changing my mind about Betazoids."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Oh, that wasn't a compliment," he replied, his eyes wide with an innocent expression. "Before I met you, I always thought that Betazoids were warm and sensual."

"Do you always fly at women at warp speed, Mr. Paris?" Stadi asked, now fully playing along to his teasing banter.

"Only when they're within visual range," Paris joked back.

"Careful with that one, Stadi," Ryan Addison said, leaning against the bulkhead that separated the two compartments. "He has a tendency to send women running toward potentially hostile planets just to get away from him."

"You're funny, Ry," Paris replied with a roll of his eyes. It didn't even take a Betazoid to feel the drop in the light atmosphere of the shuttle, but as Lt. Stadi _was_ Betazoid, she knew that Addison's words struck a nerve, but also knew it wasn't something he was likely to open up about.

Instead, she chose to let the subject drop. She glanced up at the viewscreen and smiled. "I told you it was close," she said, nodding toward the screen. "That's _Voyager_. Fifteen decks, crew compliment of 141, bioneural circuitry, first ship to be equipped with a class nine warp drive, capable of sustaining warp 9.975."

"Thanks, Stadi. I was on the R&D team, remember?" Paris said dryly. "Don't worry, I'll try to return her to you in one piece."

"And I'll be waiting here on Deep Space Nine until you do," she replied with a smile. "You were supposed to take her for the shakedown cruise anyway. Just don't get too attached. I don't want to have to fight you for that pilot's seat."

"Yes, ma'am," Paris said with chuckle as the shuttle glided into the ship's shuttlebay. "Well," he said, grabbing his duffle bag after they finished the post-flight checks. "I need to go drop my stuff off in my quarters. Lt. Stadi, thanks for the ride. Ryan, I'll see you in that bar you mentioned in an hour." He gave a quick wave and stepped off the craft, and not a minute too soon. He didn't want to answer whatever questions Stadi might have about Ryan's comments. He didn't know _how_ to answer those questions.

---

Ryan Addison was leaning against the bar, studying the variety of bottles lined up against the wall when Tom Paris entered Quark's. "You know, this is a business," Paris said to his former roommate. "You're going to have to pay for a drink."

Addison turned to his friend and grinned. "Why do you think I waited for you? I know you always carry around a few strips of latinum when we're out."

"The last time we really went out together, we had just graduated from the Academy," Paris pointed out. "That was a long time ago." He grinned. "But yeah, I've got you covered. Just keep it in the reasonable range."

"So no Saurian brandy?" Addison chuckled. "That's okay. I haven't had any booze in months, since the Federation started giving me all of my meals without asking for my input first. Even the cheap stuff is going to taste wonderful." After they put in their orders, Addison turned back to his friend. "So, notice any prospects in your reconnaissance?"

Paris laughed, taking his synthenol scotch. "What would be the point? We're leaving tomorrow morning."

Addison glanced at him, shocked. "_That_ is the point, Tommy boy. Gods, you haven't _grown up_, have you? Because that could be a real drag." He nodded to the bartender as he accepted his drink and gave a contented sigh at the first sip. "If it weren't for the security guard sharing my quarters to keep me from sneaking off in the middle of the night, I would be all over that."

"All over what?" Paris asked with a frown, glancing around as he tried to figure out who Addison was talking about.

"At this point, buddy, it doesn't even matter. I've been in prison far too long."

Paris snorted. "It's been six months."

"You saying that's not too long?"

Paris had to admit that his friend had a good point but knew better than comment on it. A minute later, he started chuckling and nudged his friend. "Hey, Ry, check it out. Ensign Eager getting swindled at eleven o'clock."

Addison turned to where his friend was looking and laughed. Sure enough, an ensign wearing what was obviously a newly minted pip was looking distinctly uncomfortable as a Ferengi was leaning over the bar at him, a box of some sort between them and an aggressive look on the Ferengi's face. "Suppose we should go help him?" he asked, swirling his drink.

"Probably would be nice of us," Paris agreed. They both headed off toward the young ensign and leaned over his shoulder as if interested in whatever the Ferengi was showing him.

"Those sure are nice," Paris commented.

"Yes, they are," the Ferengi snapped.

"Hmm," Addison murmured, picking up one of the stones. "With how shiny they are, it's hard to believe that they're primarily used for industrial purposes. Good thing they're so common out here." He turned to Paris as if remembering a story. "Remember a couple of years ago, when I was out this way? I told you about the trader who offered a pallet for one Cardassian lek. He said they would make for great insulation in that old ship of Chakotay's."

"How much are these?" Paris asked, sifting through the stones. "I'm working on building a shuttle and I can use some raw material."

"We were just negotiating the price," the Ferengi said, starting to realize that his easy sale was slipping away.

"You know what? I don't think I'm interested," the ensign replied, pushing away from the bar. The Ferengi glared at the trio as they left the bar.

Addison laughed as he guided the ensign away from the bar. "Didn't they teach you about Ferengi at the Academy?" he joked, having heard the ensign make that comment while still at the bar.

"Thanks," the ensign replied, relief in his voice. "Ensign Harry Kim, by the way."

"If it's all the same, I think I'll call you 'Ensign Eager'," Addison joked. "I'm just kidding. I'm Ryan, and this is Tom."

"Nice to meet you," Paris said as he shook the young ensign's hand. "So, fresh out of the Academy?"

Kim groaned. "Is it that obvious, sir?"

Paris rolled his eyes. "Don't call me 'sir'. It makes me think there's an admiral standing somewhere behind me, and I don't need that kind of pressure." He blinked in surprise at the sudden memory of another time that he had said those words, that time on a cold bench by an empty fountain. Strange, that she had popped into his mind at that moment, after so many years without contact between the two of them. He pushed that aside and continued his conversation with the young ensign. "You can call me Tom, but if you can't handle that, I'll eventually respond to 'Lieutenant'. And yeah, it's that obvious." He drained his drink and placed the empty glass on a busboy's tray. "Come on, let's go get something to eat."


	6. Chapter 6

Ensign Harry Kim traveled the now-familiar path from his temporary quarters on Deep Space Nine to the docking port where _Voyager_ was located. In the few days since his arrival, he couldn't stop thinking about the moment he would arrive on board, and had walked those steps leading to that docking port so many times he thought he could do it blindfolded in his sleep. This time, though, he had his duffle bag slung over one shoulder, and instead of turning back when he got to the corridor that lead to the docking port, continued confidently on. He paused slightly when he saw a small group of people up ahead. Two security officers, one of which appeared to be guarding the entrance to the ship, were talking and gesturing toward the third person, the red-headed observer he had met the night before. Ryan Addison, a bag similar to Kim's but appearing more empty over his shoulder, simply looked bored.

"Hey, Harry," Addison said, brightening as he caught sight of the young ensign. The two security officers nodded their farewells, one heading back down the corridor in the direction Harry had just come. Addison waited for Kim's thumbprint to be recognized by the system.

"What's with the security officers?" Kim finally asked as they officially entered the ship. His eyes went wide at the clean floors and bulkheads, the crisp, graceful lines of the ship. It wasn't his first ship--he went through the standard training cruises at the Academy--but it just looked so _new_.

If Addison even noticed his surroundings, he gave no indication. He shrugged at Kim's question. "They just want to make sure I'm not going to run off and do anything stupid before I make it on the ship," he said with a half-grin.

"Why would they be worried about that?" Kim asked with a frown as they stepped into the turbolift. "Sickbay."

"Because I've done worse," Addison replied with another shrug. "You excited about your first day of duty?" he asked, changing the subject as he clasped the young ensign on the shoulder.

"Terrified, actually," Kim admitted. Addison gave a low chuckle.

"I remember that feeling. I was so nervous I just about forgot how to bring the ship to warp. The console might as well have been written in Klingon for how well I understood it. I finally just took a deep breath, told myself I had more than enough training to do this, and everything was fine the rest of the day."

"Thanks," Kim replied as they stepped into Sickbay. Addison frowned slightly at the sight of the chief medical officer. There was something familiar about the tall, dark-haired man, but he couldn't put his finger on where he would have seen him before. He shrugged the thought aside; after four years at the Academy, two years as an officer, and quite a few months at a Federation penal colony, he had seen more than his fair share of Starfleet doctors. They were all blending together.

"Ensign Harry Kim, reporting for my entry physical," Kim said, trying to sound as if he knew what he was doing and failing.

The doctor barely glanced at the young man as he gestured with his head for him to have a seat on one of the biobeds. "Mr. Addison," he said slowly.

"Do I know you?" Addison asked with a frown.

"I was a surgeon at Caldik Prime," the doctor said coldly. "I was at Deep Space 4 getting medical supplies for my hospital at the same time you decided to stop by." Suddenly, Addison remembered where he had seen the physician before and smirked at the memory of the man all but ducking behind a security officer as the phasers began firing.

"Dr. Fitzgerald," he drawled. "The children of Kayteh wanted me to thank you for your generous donation of those medical supplies. They're enjoying being alive, and your incompetence made that possible."

The medical officer fixed Addison with a cold glare but didn't respond. Finally, he straightened and stepped back. "I took the opportunity to review your records from the penal colony. From the looks of it, you're in perfect health." His eyes narrowed slightly. "We're done here."

"Thanks for the excellent care, Doc," Addison replied coldly as he turned and left the room.

"What was that all about?" Kim asked, rushing to catch up.

Addison glanced at the younger man briefly before fixing his eyes on the corridor in front of him. "It's a long story, Harry, and I'm tired of telling it. If good old Doc Fitzgerald is indication, someone around here will tell you everything soon enough. Come on, I think we both have an appointment to meet with the captain."

---

Lt. Tom Paris groaned at the chirping sound of the door announcer. "Go away," he muttered quietly, burying his head in his pillow. A minute later, the door chirped again. With a heavy sigh, he threw off the covers and made his way to the door. "What?" he asked, annoyed as the doors slid open.

Ryan Addison raised his eyebrows. "I thought we were going to meet for breakfast before your first shift."

Paris groaned again and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. "Sorry. I had to go back to the navigational controls after dinner last night. Apparently one of the pathways was corrupted or something. I forgot about breakfast." He stepped aside to let his former roommate in. "Let me just get a shower and get dressed, then we can get some food."

"Love what you've done with the place," Addison muttered as Paris headed toward the bathroom. It wasn't that the room was messy; growing up with an admiral as a father made him almost compulsive about tidiness, to the point where he would actually straighten Addison's side of the room when they were at the Academy, sometimes without realizing he was doing it. While neat, however, these quarters lacked any personal touch at all—the only evidence that anyone spent the night in the room was the slightly rumpled sheets on the bed. Even the duffle Paris had brought with him was hidden away somewhere, probably in a closet.

Addison sat on the regulation couch and idly picked up a PADD Paris had left on his coffee table, thinking it was a flight plan or repair log. It was a personal log, an old one—near the end of their senior year at the Academy, judging by the stardate. Although it wasn't something he would usually do, he found himself skimming the document, looking for something interesting. He came across a name he hadn't seen in awhile and raised his eyebrows, intrigued.

He hadn't gotten very far when the PADD was snatched out of his hand. He looked up guiltily to see his former roommate lock the data on the PADD and replace it on the coffee table. "Sorry, buddy," he apologized. "I got bored."

"I know it's been awhile since this was all that applicable, but didn't we have a rule about not getting into each other's things?" Paris asked as they headed for the mess hall. "In fact, I seem to remember that you were the one to make that rule."

"I said I was sorry," Addison replied. "What are you doing reading old logs about Torres, anyway?"

"It wasn't about Torres," Paris argued. "I recorded that log the day after we got back from Rigel our senior year." He didn't offer any other explanation, so Addison dropped it.

The mess hall was surprisingly empty for 0800, but neither complained as they replicated their breakfasts and grabbed a table near the windows. "So," Paris began, taking a bite of his scrambled eggs, "you scared off Ensign Eager already?"

Addison scoffed. "He said he wanted to get his quarters set up before coming on duty this afternoon. I think he's probably sitting there, studying the schematics of the ship to make sure he doesn't miss anything. I told him he could join us for breakfast, but he wasn't interested." He shrugged slightly. "He's probably too nervous to eat. Anyway, this gives us a chance to talk about things and people he doesn't know about. How is everyone, anyway?"

"Who do you mean by 'everyone'?" Paris asked.

Addison shrugged. "I don't know. Everyone. I got one letter each from the Stimler twins after I got thrown in jail, and then you were my only visitor, save for Captain Janeway, for the whole time I was there. How are Siobhan and Gial? They sleeping together without managing to kill each other?"

Paris looked surprised. "How do you know either is sleeping with anyone?" he asked.

He shrugged. "Siobhan is never _not_ sleeping with _somebody_, and I figured it was about time."

"Siobhan took Sito's death really hard," Paris said softly. "They got pretty close while they were both on the _Enterprise. _She transferred off the ship, to Starfleet Corps of Engineers in San Francisco. She and Gial started spending a lot of time together, and after a few months, they decided to give it a chance. Last I talked to them, they were thinking of actually moving in together."

"Good for them," Addison said, managing a slight smile. "They deserve to be happy." Lts. Siobhan Patel and Winat Gial were two of the group of cadets who spent all their time together for all four years, the other four members being Paris, Addison, and the Stimler twins. Patel had contacted him after he resigned from Starfleet, practically ordering him to reconsider joining the Maquis. He didn't reply, and she hadn't spoken to him since. Gial had remained silent, but it was debatable if that was out of his devotion to Siobhan or his deep-seeded approval of Addison's change in career. Of everything that happened to Addison since he left Starfleet, including his capture and arrest, her turning her back on him had probably hurt the most. "So," Addison said, forcing a smile and changing the subject, "shiny new ship. It looks fast. You think Captain Janeway's going to let me play with it?" Paris could only chuckle and shake his head in wonder as a response.


	7. Chapter 7

Lt. Tom Paris turned slightly in his chair when he heard the sounds of the turbolift doors opening on the bridge, revealing Harry Kim and Ryan Addison. Breakfast had come and gone several hours ago, and unfortunately, last minute repairs of the navigational array had kept Paris from lunch. Ryan had sent him a text comm about Commander Cavit and Dr. Fitzgerald confronting Ensign Kim about who the kid chose to spend his time with and how Kim had responded. Paris didn't think he had ever been so proud of a newly-minted ensign, standing up to two lieutenant commanders like that. Obviously this was someone to keep around as a friend. "Mr. Kim, Mr. Addison. It's good to see you again," Captain Janeway said as she crossed the bridge toward them. "Mr. Kim, this is your station." She gestured toward the Ops console, and Paris had to bite his lip to keep from laughing at the overly eager expression on the young ensign's face as he stepped behind the controls. "Would you like to take over?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Kim replied, a bit too quickly and a bit too loudly. Paris coughed slightly to hide the chuckle that had escaped. He may make a good friend, but it would be a little while until he made a confident officer.

"It's not crunch time yet, Mr. Kim. I'll let you know when," the captain replied dryly. Paris figured he had gotten the same "call me Captain" speech that he heard some of the R&D crew talk about weeks before.

The captain crossed the bridge again and nodded toward her first officer. "Lt. Paris," Lt. Commander Cavit boomed, breaking the pilot from his internal musings on proper address of senior officers. "Lay in a course, and verify with operations."

"Course laid in and verified," Paris replied. He was tempted to add some editorial comments, but he didn't know this first officer well enough to chance it. Judging from his reactions toward Ryan on the bridge earlier, as well as what he had heard about lunch, Paris doubted the older man would find it amusing.

"Initiate launching sequence," Cavit continued.

"Aye, sir," Paris replied. "Sequence underway."

Captain Janeway took a seat in her command chair, her back straight, a slight smile on her face. _This is the moment you've been waiting for_. Technically, she had been the one to order the ship out of Utopia Planitia shipyards the week before, but this was different. That was moving from the shipyards to a docking port and never leaving Federation space. This was her new ship's first mission. "Engage," she ordered.

The first few hours went smoothly, a little bit too smoothly for Paris' tastes. As a test pilot, he was accustomed to pushing ships to the limits and a little beyond; flying in a straight line under the Federation speed limits wasn't his style. He was almost glad to see the first signs of the plasma activity in his sensors as they approached the Badlands.

"Mr. Addison," Janeway ordered, rising and heading toward the Tactical station, indicating for the observer to follow. "The Cardassians gave us the last known heading of the Maquis ship," she said, bringing up a sensor map at the console. "Between that and the records of the plasma activity the day it disappeared, we might be able to approximate Chakotay's course."

"We think they're heading to the planetoids in the Terakoff belt," Lt. Commander Cavit chimed in.

Addison shook his head. "Chakotay wasn't too fond of that particular part of the Badlands. Not enough cover. He liked to stay on this side of the Merias system. May I?" he asked, gesturing toward the console. Janeway moved aside. "There's a moon in the Yergas system, M-class but just barely. Not many people knew about it. Chakotay liked to use it to regroup and make repairs after a particularly taxing battle or raid. If you want my opinion, which is the point of me being here, that's where he would have headed."

Cavit frowned. "The Cardassians said that when they forced him to change course, he was heading in the opposite direction." He looked like he still didn't believe that this former Maquis pilot would sell out his friends for any reason.

Addison looked at him as if he were the stupidest man to wear a uniform. "Like I said, not many people knew about it. There's no way Chakotay would have gone there if he even so much as thought that a Cardassian ship had him in sensors. He would have made a wide loop around the plasma storms, hoping to either lose the Cardies or force them into a plasma burst. If he was able to complete his course, here's what he would have tried." A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips as his fingers played over the console, plotting a course. "At least, this is what _I_ would have tried, and I taught him everything I knew. Biggest difference between him and me at the helm, though, is that he has an impressive record of wrecking ships." The final course appeared on the console, giving an amoeboid shape that weaved through half of the Badlands, running close to some of the larger plasma storms.

"Mr. Paris, I'm sending you this trajectory. Plot a course to match," Janeway called out across the bridge.

"Aye, Captain," Paris replied, taking a look at the map Addison had given. He would have to make a few changes, but if this ship's navigational system was half as good as it was advertised—and it was, as he knew personally after putting in almost two hard-worked years on it—he shouldn't have too many problems. "Are there any planets or stopping grounds they could have landed on, if they couldn't make it back to his moon?"

"Nothing hospitable," Addison replied.

"The Cardassians claimed they ran the ship into a plasma storm, where it was destroyed, but we haven't found any debris, not so much as a random warp trail indicating that there's any truth to that," Janeway said, returning to her seat in the center of the bridge. She glanced at her observer. "We're just going to have to assume that he made it back to his moon, and hope to see them there."

Addison wanted to give a sarcastic reply to that, but the unyielding expression on her face told him that wouldn't be a good idea. He quietly returned to his position somewhat behind Paris, watching the viewscreen intently as his Academy roommate dodged through plasma storms as if he did that every day before breakfast.

"Captain," Kim said, his voice confused. "We're being scanned by a coherent tetryon beam. I can't figure out where it's coming from, and I'm also reading a displacement wave coming right for us."

Janeway frowned. Coherent tetryon beams didn't come from nowhere. "On-screen," she ordered. Her frown deepened at the image. "Analysis?"

Kim shook his head. "Some sort of polarized magnetic variation."

"We might be able to disperse it," Cavit chimed in.

Janeway nodded; her years as a science officer led her to the same conclusion. "Do it," she ordered. "Lt. Paris, move us away."

"Entering new coordinates," he said, his fingers moving deftly over the controls.

"Our efforts to disperse had no effect," Kim announced. "And it's still heading right for us."

"We can't outrun it, Captain, not with the plasma storms preventing us from going to warp," Paris said, his voice tight as he ran through possibilities in his head.

"Brace for impact," Janeway ordered. Paris grabbed onto his console with one hand, the other still trying to move the ship away, but to no avail. A few seconds after the captain's command, the ship shook as the wave impacted it.


	8. Chapter 8

Ryan Addison shook his head slightly to clear it once he felt like the ship had stopped shaking. "Ooh," he moaned, putting his hand to his temple and closing his eyes. Once he felt properly oriented again, he opened his eyes and looked around.

To say that the bridge was a mess would be putting it mildly. There were more bulkheads on the floor than on the walls, where they should have been; more conduits and wires hanging from the ceiling than he had realized ran through the ceiling. Aside from flashing consoles, he didn't see any motion on the bridge at all, and for a second, thought that he was the only one who had survived. A slight groan from the center of the bridge quickly dispelled that notion.

He saw Captain Janeway sit up, her hair mostly loose from her tight bun. She bent down at the prone figure at her feet, that of Commander Cavit, who had been somewhere between the Tactical station and his chair when the wave hit the ship. She put her hand to his neck to feel for a pulse and sighed. Addison felt an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. The first time he met the lt. commander, he had just delivered enough medical supplies for half the colonies on the demilitarized zone after surviving an old-fashioned shootout at Deep Space Four, and he was flying happy—too happy to notice the Starfleet vessel closing in on him. Cavit had been at tactical when his ship trapped the old Maquis shuttle in its tractor beam, the one to come by the brig later that day to gloat about his successful capture. _I couldn't stand the guy, but that doesn't mean I wanted him dead_, Addison thought, shaking his head slightly.

He turned toward the front of the bridge, where moments ago Lt. Tom Paris had been wrestling with the controls to level the ship. With a sinking feeling, Addison noticed the smoke coming from the console and the complete absence of a chair where it should have been. He glanced down at the floor and saw his former roommate lying still, half under the smoking console.

"Mr. Addison?" Janeway asked, seeing him as he moved toward Paris. "What's his status?"

Ryan was running through everything he remembered from his field medic course at the Academy as he approached his friend and put his fingers to his neck. To his surprise, he felt a deep, strong pulse. "He's alive!" he replied, a little more excited than he realized.

"Of course I'm alive," Paris groaned, turning to sit up. "It's going to take more than a bump on the head to take a Paris out."

"You with your notoriously thick skull," Addison joked as he helped his former roommate up. Paris glanced around and sighed before turning toward his station as sighing again. Even though it was a lost cause, he didn't waste any time trying to beginning repairs.

As if just remembering how dire the situation was, Janeway turned toward the rear of the bridge. "Report," she ordered. She didn't see either the Tactical or Ops officers, and hoped at least one of them would be alive.

To her relief, the dark-haired head of Ensign Kim popped up from his station. "Hull breaches on deck fourteen," he announced. "No communication with Engineering or just about half the ship, for that matter."

"Damage reports are coming in," the Tactical officer replied. Good, they were both alive. "Just about all decks are responding. Nothing from Sickbay."

"Bridge to Sickbay," Janeway called out. "Doctor, please respond." There was nothing.

"External sensors are coming back," Kim called out. "Captain, there's something out there."

"You're going to have to do better than that, Mr. Kim," she snapped.

"I, uh, don't know," he admitted.

"Well, get it on the screen," she said, no less curt than a moment before.

"I'm trying," he said, his voice tight, afraid of disappointing his captain on his first day. A few seconds later, the viewscreen sputtered to life, revealing the oddest-looking structure Janeway had ever seen and the small Maquis ship they had been chasing. "Captain," he said, interrupting her automatic drive to scientifically analyze what she was seeing. "I think there's something wrong with the sensors. They're saying we're more than seventy thousand light years from where we were." Janeway turned to him in surprise. "We're on the other side of the galaxy."

Her mind couldn't comprehend that at the moment, so she asked, "What are you getting from the Maquis ship?"

Kim shook his head. "Not reading any lifesigns," he replied. "And our sensors can't penetrate the station, if that's what it even is."

"Try hailing it," she ordered.

_*Engineering to the bridge,*_ an unfamiliar voice called out. _*We've taken heavy damage. The chief's dead, and the core is threatening to breach.*_

"I'm on my way," Janeway responded. "Mr. Kim, go down to Sickbay and get a status report. Mr. Paris, you have the bridge."

"Captain," Paris protested. "We're not going anywhere. There's not much I can do from the bridge."

She paused slightly and regarded the pilot before shaking her head. "I need you here, Lieutenant," she replied, her voice firm. "You're the closest thing I have to a first officer right now."

"Aye," he replied, somewhat disappointed. After all the work he had put in on the navigational array and propulsion systems, he probably knew the warp core better than half of the engineers down in Engineering, and would definitely be more useful there than he was on the bridge. Still, she was the captain, and her word was final. If there was one thing his father tried to drill into his head growing up, it was that.

Paris and Addison shared a quick glance and resigned shrug. Like Tom, Ryan had come to the conclusion that there was nothing for him to do on the bridge, but unlike his friend, he was free to go elsewhere. "Harry, wait up," Addison called out after the young ensign as he stepped into the turbolift. Maybe he could put that years-ago field medic training to use and actually do something good for the first time in months.

---

Lt. Paris was sifting through the debris of the bridge when he heard a chirping sound from the Ops console. He glanced quickly behind him to see if anyone was available to see what it was, but with the first officer and science officer dead, the captain in Engineering, the Ops officer in Sickbay, and everyone else doing more critical repairs, the entire bridge crew consisted of him and Ensign Rollins.

He quickly hopped over the railing dividing the upper and lower decks of the bridge and activated the Ops console. He frowned slightly at what he saw and tapped his combadge. "Paris to Janeway," he began. "We're being scanned by the, uh, array."

_*Scanned?*_ he heard her question. For a second, everything went a bit fuzzy, and when he regained his bearings, he seemed to be standing by a garden of some sort. He rubbed his eyes and blinked, almost hoping that it was a figment of his imagination, but when he opened his eyes again, he was still standing next to Ensign Rollins in the garden.

"What the hell?" he asked Rollins as he pulled his tricorder off his belt. The ensign already had his out and scanning.

"Beats me, sir," the tactical officer replied. "I'm reading some more human lifesigns, over this way," he said, pointing toward a farmhouse of some sort.

As they approached, they ran into Captain Janeway, surrounded by a group of engineers. He opened his mouth to say something, but she beat him to it. "Don't believe what you see, Mr. Paris," she told him, her eyes still on her tricorder. "We've been transported less than a kilometer. We're inside the array. This is all some sort of projection."

He was about to make a sarcastic comment to that, but thought better of it. The captain was having a bad enough day as it was. He nodded slightly as he saw Kim and Addison approach. "Hey, buddy," Addison greeted him, a wide grin on his face. "I would ask if this is your doing, but this isn't your type of holodeck program at all."

Paris snorted. "Right. I decided what we all needed after getting thrown into the Delta quadrant with our ship barely intact is a good old-fashioned square dance on the holodeck."

That at least got a small smile out of the captain, who quickly covered it up with that authoritarian look they must teach in command school. "Mr. Paris," she ordered, "go around and make sure the whole crew is present and accounted for. While you're at it, see if you can find a transporter station of some sort. Mr. Kim, I want you to investigate this projection, see if you can find its source." She paused a second, then added, "Take Mr. Addison with you. If you find anything, let me know. If not, we'll reconvene here in an hour." She nodded brusquely to dismiss them, and the three men peeled off from the rest of the group.

"She must trust you more than she does me," Paris commented wryly to Ensign Kim. "You get to investigate their technology. I get to count people. Hell, even Ryan could do that."

"Thanks, buddy," Addison said dryly. He brightened as a brunette in a light summer dress put her hand on his arm. "Well, hello, there," he drawled. Paris only rolled his eyes and went off to count the crew.

He was about to return to the rendezvous point to inform the captain that everyone was present and accounted for when one of the holographic characters nudged him in the elbow. "Come with me," the middle aged man sternly. For a split second, Paris had a sudden flashback to his childhood; his father used that exact tone on him more than once.

He allowed himself to be led to the barn, where he saw the rest of the crew was gathered and slowly filtering in. He didn't know what was going on, but he had a feeling it wouldn't be good.


	9. Chapter 9

As abruptly as they had been transported to the array, they were back. Chakotay blinked in surprise as he straightened from being slouched-over his console. "Report," he managed, clearing his dry throat.

Tuvok looked slightly out-of-sorts—as out-of-sorts as a Vulcan could look—as he activated his console. "It appears that we were at the array 13.7 days," he said calmly.

"Two weeks?" Chakotay exclaimed in surprise. "What the hell were they doing with us in two weeks?"

Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "I do not have sufficient information to answer that," he said.

"That was a rhetorical question, Tuvok," Chakotay said with a slight chuckle as he checked the ship's status. From what he could see, it looked like Torres had done her magic on the engines yet again before they were forced off the ship.

_*Seska to Chakotay,*_ the comm system announced. Without waiting for a response, she continued. _*Is B'Elanna up there with you? Everyone made it back to engineering except her.*_

He glanced up in surprise. "No, she's not here," he said with a frown. "Do you think she's still on the array?"

_*Are you asking me?*_ Seska asked dryly.

He rolled his eyes. "How do the engines look?"

There was a slight pause on the other end. _*It looks like Torres managed to get the warp drive back online before we were transported to that circle dance they had over there.*_

Chakotay had to chuckle at that. "It's a square dance, Seska. Do we have enough power to get away from here?"

_*We have the power, yes, but where do you want to go? In case you've forgotten, we're on the other side of the galaxy, and that thing is probably our only way back.*_

He hated to admit it, but she was right. "Let me worry about that," he snapped. "Chakotay out." He sighed and rubbed his hand over his hair before turning to his tactical officer/jack-of-all-trades. "Scan for the nearest inhabited planet. We need to figure out what's going on around here, and I'm hoping one of the neighbors will be able to get us some information."

Tuvok nodded. "There appear to be several M-class planets in the vicinity. I am reading life signs on one 1.7 light-years away."

"Setting a course," Chakotay said, tapping at his panel. He powered up the engines, but before they could go anywhere, he felt the all-too-familiar shaking of a tractor beam. "Where's that coming from?" he snapped. "Is it the array?"

"No," Tuvok said bluntly. "I'm reading a Starfleet vessel."

"Starfleet?" Chakotay asked, surprised. "What are they doing here?"

"Most likely, the same thing we are," Tuvok said dryly. "We are being hailed."

"Wonderful," Chakotay muttered. He sighed again. The last thing he wanted was a nice heart-to-heart with some ambitious Starfleet captain. "On screen."

He turned his head slightly toward the viewscreen, and found himself face-to-face, so to speak, with a stern-looking woman with auburn hair and the four pips of a captain. He managed to avoid raising his eyebrows in surprise; she wasn't exactly his type, and he thought the tight bun she had her hair tied in made her look too severe, but of all of his years in Starfleet, he never served under such an attractive captain. _You've been chasing Cardies too long, Chakotay_, he scolded himself. While his ship was under a tractor beam on the other side of the galaxy was no time to be thinking about getting a date. And he was sure Seska wouldn't appreciate the thought, either.

Over on _Voyager,_ the few gathered on the bridge were watching the encounter from their side of things. "Commander Chakotay," the captain began. "I am Captain Janeway of the _USS Voyager_. One of my crew didn't make it back from the array, Ensign Harry Kim. Was he transported to your ship by mistake?"

"No," the Maquis captain said flatly. He paused for a second. "We're also missing one of our crew, one of my engineers, B'Elanna Torres."

Lt. Tom Paris glanced up in surprise. The two captains were continuing their conversation, but he didn't hear any of it. Torres? In the Maquis? Sure, she had all sorts of misplaced anger, but he didn't think she'd be the type to take it the Maquis. He glanced behind him at his former roommate, whose eyes were wide with surprise. Feeling Paris' eyes on him, he turned toward the pilot, a slightly guilty look on his face. He shook his head almost imperceptibly and turned back to the viewscreen.

"Three of us will beam over," Chakotay was saying, bringing Paris back to the present. A minute later, three men in Maquis fatigues appeared on the bridge, phasers and all.

"Watch out, they're armed!" Ensign Rollins called out, pulling out his phaser. Paris rolled his eyes and turned back to his station. Of course they'd be armed. They were outlaws.

"Welcome back, Mr. Tuvok," Captain Janeway said, a triumphant smile on her face.

The tall Vulcan turned toward the Maquis captain, an eyebrow raised. "I must inform you that I was assigned to infiltrate your crew. I am Captain Janeway's chief of security." A dark haired man behind Chakotay took a step forward, stopped by his captain's arm.

"I always thought that it was mighty convenient that those Starfleet ships were waiting for us after we dropped off those medical supplies," Ryan Addison said, stepping forward and fixing Tuvok with a cold glare.

The security chief raised an eyebrow. "It was my duty to inform Starfleet of any illegal action against their ships or bases, Mr. Addison."

"At least the Vulcan can say he was doing his duty," Chakotay said, directing that at Addison. "What's your excuse?"

The tall red-headed observer slowly turned his gaze toward his former Maquis captain. "This isn't about you, Chakotay," he said softly. "This is about me." He gave a dry smile and shrugged a shoulder. "You always said that we had to look out for ourselves above all. I'm just following your advice."

Chakotay opened his mouth to respond, but Janeway held up a hand to stop him. "You two can finish this later. Right now, we have two missing crewmen to find." She waited for an objection, and not hearing one, continued. "We need to get back to that array, see if they're still there." She turned to her security chief. "Mr. Tuvok, break out the compression rifles, and meet us in Transporter Room Two. We'll divide into teams. While Mr. Chakotay and I search the array for our missing people, you'll have to search the array, learn as much about its technology as you can. It brought us here, we have to believe it'll take us back." Her eyes moved slowly over the other faces. Tuvok was as impassive as always, Paris appeared impatient, Addison's face was a mask, Chakotay seemed almost hostile. "Agreed?" she asked pointedly, directing the question at Chakotay, who nodded once in response. "Then let's do it. Mr. Paris, you have the bridge. Maintain red alert, and hold our current position. Keep a transporter lock on us at all times."

The captain and the two men she indicated made their way toward the turbolift in the back of the room. Paris stood there impassive for a moment, then spoke. "Captain," he called out, making his way toward her. She stopped by the Tactical station as the men boarded the turbolift. "Let me go with you," Paris said insistently once he reached her.

She shook her head quickly. "Like I said earlier, you're the closest thing I have to a first officer right now, Lieutenant. I need you here."

"I'm a pilot, Captain. I have no command experience; I barely know how to work the transporters. Rollins can handle the ship better than I can," he said, gesturing toward the officer at Tactical. He lowered his voice slightly. "Please, Captain, I got to know Harry. I would hate to see anything happen to him."

She thought she heard the slightest pause before the name "Harry", and frowned at it. If he couldn't even remember his name, how much could he have gotten to know him? She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Paris," she said emphatically. "I need you here." She turned back toward the turbolift, but his voice stopped her again.

"Then take Ryan," he said, gesturing to his friend. At her surprised expression, he scoffed slightly. "It's not as if he's going to pull some Maquis trick with his old friends over there, Captain. We're in the Delta quadrant; where's he going to go?"

She considered that for a second, then nodded once. "Mr. Addison, you're with me."

Ryan paused before passing his friend. "I'll explain when I get back," he said quietly.

Paris looked at him with a cold expression in his eyes. "Don't bother," he said brusquely before turning to return to his station.


	10. Chapter 10

Ensign Harry Kim knew his eyes were open, but he couldn't focus on anything around him. All he saw was white, and a hazy white at that. He blinked a few times, but that did little to clear his vision. He saw a form bend over him, and concentrated on focusing on the face. Slowly, he began to make out features. It was a woman, with short brown hair and kind eyes. He thought he heard her say something about him waking up, but her lips weren't moving.

He groaned and sat up, trying to get a bearing for his surroundings. He was on bed, in what appeared to be some sort of hospital or clinic. There was another bed in the room, and a still form lying on it. In a motion fast enough to leave his head spinning, the woman on the other bed bolted upright, got a quick look at her surroundings, and jumped off of her bed. She looked quickly at him, her eyes wild, and he almost did a double-take in surprise. "Torres?" he asked dumbly. She certainly looked like his former engineering tutor, and he couldn't imagine there were all that many half-Klingons out there.

If she recognized him, or even heard him, she gave no indication. She shoved one of the medical attendants aside and made a run for the door, which was sealed shut. Kim could see that she had some of the same odd bumps that he had, but gave no indication of that slowing her down. She pounded on the door, as if that would help, and when it slid open, tried to shove past the men walking through it. However, there were two of them, and she was sick and injured; it wasn't much of a fight. They grabbed her by the arms, and despite her twisting, didn't let go.

"Torres!" he called out again, this time urgently as he saw one of the men pull out something that almost looked like a weapon. She looked at the man with that same fire in her eyes, still fighting even as he pressed it against her skin. She collapsed into the arms of the attendants, who placed her back on the bed.

_Great_, Kim thought. _I'm stuck in some alien hospital with a crazy half-Klingon. Why didn't they cover _this_ at the Academy?_

_---_

"Paris! Wait up!" Ryan Addison called out to his friend, jogging slightly in the corridor to try to catch up. Paris glanced at him briefly over his shoulder, but didn't slow down.

"Go away, Addison. I don't want to deal with you right now." Addison had tried to talk to him as soon as the away team was transported back to _Voyager_, but Paris brushed him off. He waited patiently on the bridge for the lieutenant's shift to end, knowing that he would head straight for his quarters. As soon as Paris made a move to leave the bridge, Addison followed.

"Just let me explain, will you?" Addison said crossly as they reached Paris' quarters. He followed his former roommate in without being invited.

"You don't have anything to explain," Paris said coldly as he headed for the replicator. "Coffee, hot, with cream and sugar," he ordered into the machine. He didn't offer Addison anything.

"I didn't know she was with them," Addison said, despite Paris' words. "In fact, I don't know if she's _with them_ with them." He took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to explain. "The reason I was leading that mission for the medical supplies is that Chakotay was going to Qo'noS, or somewhere in the Klingon Empire, to meet with the head of the Klingon Defense Force, or at least someone fairly high ranked. They had gotten interested in the Maquis, and were looking into offering their support, in a very unofficial sort of way—a clocking device here, an engineer there, that sort of thing. I'm guessing Chakotay got an engineer." He paused to let that sink in, but Paris didn't say anything as he sipped his coffee and looked over some information on his PADD. "Well? Aren't you going to say anything?"

Paris finally looked over at him and shrugged. "Whatever, Addison. It doesn't matter anyway. That was a long time ago, and it's not as if anything ever happened."

"Right," Addison said sarcastically. "And I'm sure you never had any interest in anything ever happening. Although why, I don't understand. Sure, she was gorgeous, with a great body and all, but then there was that temper, and the fact that she never gave you the time of day. And, after all, you have it made. You work for R&D, you move to a new base—and therefore, new women—every few months. A lifetime without commitments, right?" Paris shrugged slightly and went back to his PADD. Addison waited a minute for him to say something, but he had nothing to add. "What's been with you, anyway?" he finally asked sharply. "You've either been all serious or dismissive about everything since we arrived on _Voyager_. It's getting a bit old."

Paris looked at him, his eyes veiled. Finally, he stood and headed for the replicator to recycle his mug. He took a minute, and then turned toward his friend. "You want to know why I was reading that personal log entry from Rigel?" He didn't give Addison a chance to respond. "I wanted to see if I could figure out how it is that you are exactly the same now as you were then. I was trying to understand how you never grew up."

Addison's jaw dropped as he stared at his friend, incredulous. "You did not seriously just say that," he said flatly. Paris raised his eyebrows in a challenging manner, but didn't respond. "My parents are _dead_, Tom. They're dead. So is Sito, and I'm guessing by the fact that Gial never talked about his parents, that they're dead, too. All by the hands of some greedy Cardassians who wanted what wasn't theirs. So I did something about that. I resigned from a career that I loved, that I was _good_ at and had a future with, and joined up with Chakotay's band of merry men. I went for weeks at a time eating nothing but rations that we managed to scrounge up during raids, getting drunk whenever I could because it helped me forget what I was doing and why I was doing it, and quite frankly, it's the easiest way to fall asleep in the berths of that collection of spare parts that Chakotay calls a ship. And for what? To get captured by the very organization I once sold my soul to, to get tossed into jail for treason and crimes against the Federation, without ever making a difference at all. So I'm _sorry_ if I'm actually taking the time to enjoy my one month off for the next four and a half years. I'm oh so _sorry_ that I don't fit into your neat little mold of what a proper grown-up should be." He spun toward the door, but turned back at his friend before leaving. "I don't get you, Tom. For as long as I've known you, all you wanted was to be different than your family legacy, to do your own thing, for good or for bad. Now look at you. You've become quite the upstanding young officer, the perfect representation of everything cadets should strive to be. I'm sure your father is preparing your space in the Paris Hall of Fame as we speak." He snorted. "I guess at some point in your quest to become an adult, you forgot to be a little bit more specific about what adult you wanted to be. Have a good night, _Paris_."

---

Ensign Harry Kim watched impassively as a group of the medical personnel, dressed all in white with their mouths covered in masks, came and checked on his wounds and made sure Torres was still sedated. After they left, he went back to what he was doing before they came in; mostly, looking around the sterile white room. _Nice ceiling_, he thought. _Kind of unusual, but nice_… His internal musings were suddenly interrupted by motion on the occupied bed next to him.

"Whoa," he said, holding his hands out defensively as the half-Klingon bolted upright, as quickly as she had the time before. "It's okay. We're in a hospital of some sort."

Her eyes were wild, not comprehending his words. "Who are you?" she asked finally, calmly slightly. "Where exactly are we?"

He smiled slightly. "Ensign Harry Kim. We've met, actually. You used to tutor me in engineering, back at the Academy. Torres, right?"

"That's right," she said coldly. "Now where are we?"

He shrugged. "I'm not sure. I was kidnapped from the array, just like you were."

She glared vehemently at him. "And _what_ was Starfleet doing at that array, anyway?"

"Actually, we were looking for you," he replied with a slight smirk.

"Looking to capture us, you mean," she accused.

"Right," he said sarcastically. "Consider yourself captured. I know I have a phaser in here somewhere," he said patting along the white hospital gown as if to find one.

Her glare strengthened. "I don't find this at all amusing, Starfleet," she hissed. She spun on her heel toward the door.

"It's no use. It's locked, remember?" he said as she walked toward it. She looked at the door for a minute, then gave a short scream as she punched the door in frustration. "Hey!" he exclaimed, grabbing her by the elbows, being careful not to press on any of her wounds. He knew how painful they were. "Do you want them to sedate you _again_?"

She twisted easily out of his grasp; perhaps he overestimated how sick she was. She gave a frustrated groan as she began pacing. "_Damn_ this!" she exclaimed. "I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin!"

"Must be your Klingon half getting out of control," Kim joked, hoping to relieve some of the tension.

That was the wrong thing to say. She stopped her pacing and glared at him. "You do not know me well enough to be making jokes about my Klingon temper, Starfleet."

"I have a name, _Maquis_," he shot back at her.

She turned back at him with a slight smirk. "It's a nice nickname, _Harry_, but a bit undeserved. I'm not really Maquis. I'm a lieutenant in the Klingon Defense Force, assigned to Chakotay's cell to 'help them out'. I'm pretty sure the High Council didn't have _this_ in mind." When he didn't have anything to say to that, she resumed her pacing, and had circled back to the beds when the doors slid open unexpectedly. Torres immediately went into a defensive position. Kim held out his arm to stop her, earning him a glare. "Why are you holding us here?" she demanded of the man.

He looked surprised at the accusation. "You're not our prisoners," he replied. "In fact, you're our honored guests. I know this is a lot for you to handle. I'll try to explain everything." He held out the clothes and shoes he had brought. "Here, I brought you clothes to change into. You must be hungry. After you change, I'll take you to get some food, as long as you promise not to be violent." He looked pointedly at Torres, who glared in response.

"What's wrong with us?" Kim asked, stepping forward. "What are these things?"

"We really don't know," the man replied, apologetic. He held the clothes out again. "Please, get dressed and come join me in the courtyard for a meal."

Torres looked suspicious, but eventually reached forward for the clothes, handing the larger set to Kim. The man smiled gently and turned to leave.

"Uh…" Kim said, glancing around the small room and not seeing any place to change.

Torres rolled her eyes. "Just turn around, Ensign. I promise I won't peek."


	11. Chapter 11

Lt. Tom Paris reentered the bridge to find it slightly more organized than it had been at the end of his last shift. He was feeling a lot more subdued, a combination of the affect Ryan's speech had on him and the lack of sleep he got during the night—which was probably also related to Ryan's speech. One of the problems with having the same best friend since you were fourteen is that he knew exactly which buttons to push to get a reaction.

"Good morning, Mr. Paris," Captain Janeway said from her chair in the center of the bridge. She sounded almost cheerful, and he was instantly resentful of that fact. _Must be the coffee_, he thought, noticing the steaming mug she was holding.

"Good morning, Captain," he replied, trying to emulate that mood and failing. His words came out almost bitter and sarcastic. "Anything new in the Delta quadrant this morning?"

"Actually, yes," she said with a slight smile as he took his seat at the conn. "We've contacted a local trader. He believes that our people were sent by one of those energy pulses to that planet. He's agreed to help us to the planet and lead us to where he thinks they're being held."

"Well, that certainly is news," he said, impressed.

"I've been trying to figure out who to send down with him," she continued. "Commander Chakotay and his security officer will go down, of course, as will Lt. Tuvok and myself. We'll be in orbit around the planet, so there won't be much for a pilot to do on the ship. We can use another officer on the away team, if you're interested."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, giving her a wide grin. It seemed like after paying his dues by getting jobs since this mission had gone horribly awry, she was finally letting him do something he wanted to do.

She nodded. "Good," she replied. "We'll be arriving at the planet in an hour. I would suggest you fill a canteen before we beam down."

---

Kim paced a short path, still trying to absorb what the Ocampan had told them. They were underground, with a race of people completely dependent on some Caretaker to stay alive. Oh, and they were dying from some unknown disease. Can't leave out the good parts of the story.

To his surprise, B'Elanna Torres seemed to be taking the news well. Her tension from earlier that day was gone, replaced with an almost placid attitude and intense concentration as she leaned against the wall in the cavern-like hallway they had retreated to after their meal. He was sure it was in his head, but he could almost convince himself he could hear her thinking, trying to figure out a way out of the situation.

Torres gave an ironic laugh. "We were supposed to be headed to Nu'Daq so I could finally get back to my life," she said bitterly. "Now here I am, on the other side of the galaxy, in some strange underground city with some strange incurable disease and the company of Ensign Eager."

"Well, at least you didn't describe me as strange," Kim said dryly. He didn't comment on the fact that she was now the third person to call him 'Ensign Eager'. He wondered what the automatic application of that nickname said about him. "I'm sure Captain Janeway is doing all that she can to get us out of here. We have some sort of emergency medical hologram on _Voyager_; hopefully he's programmed with cures of nodule-causing alien diseases," he said, holding up his wrist as emphasis.

Torres snorted. "I heard about the holodocs in one of my engineering classes. I haven't even seen the thing, and I already don't trust it." She grimaced and grabbed her shoulder, breathing loudly through clenched teeth. "Although right now, I'm thinking it would be an improvement."

"Should we go back to the clinic?" Kim asked, concerned about how quickly her disease was spreading, at least compared to his.

She returned that with a glare. "Someday, Ensign, you're going to be the senior officer and the one in charge of what's going on. Until then, I believe a lieutenant outranks an ensign. I make the decisions. Understood?"

"Sure," he replied shortly. He didn't know if her stubbornness was a Klingon trait or something unique to her, but either way, he just hoped it didn't compromise their chances of getting out of there.

"Are you okay?" a quiet voice asked from behind them. Both spun in surprise.

"Are you people _watching_ us?" Torres asked incredulously.

"No, nothing like that," the Ocampan woman said quickly. "I came to give you something, a medicine. Some people have broken from tradition, they live outside the city and grow vegetables and herbs." She handed Kim a small clear box filled with some sort of dried plant material. "It's a mixture of some mosses and herbs, something that should make you feel better."

"What would make us feel better," Torres retorted, "is to get back to our ships, to our doctors and our medications." She paused and took a deep breath. "Is there a way out of here, up to the surface?"

The woman looked concerned. "There are tunnels, back from when the Caretaker brought us here more than five hundred generations ago. Some of those tunnels still stand, and there are breaches in some of the security barriers, just big enough to slip through, but parts have collapsed and are covered with meters of rocks. There are stories about people who have gone to the surface, but none of them were ever heard from again." She paused, then added, "And none of them were as sick as you."

"Let us worry about that," Torres replied. "Can you show us those tunnels, get us some tools to dig with?"

The woman shook her head slightly. "It would take days, maybe weeks for you to dig through. You need to conserve your strength, let yourself heal."

"Please," Kim said insistently. "It's our only chance. Our people have treatments for our wounds." _Well, I hope they do._ "But that won't do us much good unless we can get to them."

The Ocampan looked conflicted, but then nodded slightly. "I'll see what I can get you, and then I'll show you to the tunnels, but that's all I can do."

Kim gave her an encouraging smile. "That's all we need."

---

Lt. Paris glanced down at the slight Ocampan woman, Kes, lying on the biobed. She was cute, in a pixie-ish sort of way, with short blond hair, big blue eyes, and pointed ears. If it weren't for the fact that the Talaxian, Neelix, seemed to have some of claim over her, he would consider going after her himself. _I really must be growing up,_ he mused. He wouldn't have let a little thing like a boyfriend stop him from pursuing a girl before.

He glanced over at Neelix, the furry-looking alien who had accompanied them to the planet, and felt a touch of anger boiling up inside of him. What he had done, holding that phaser to that Kazon's head and shooting the water, had compromised their mission and seriously hurt any chance they had to get Torres and Kim back, and had done it just to rescue Kes. To save one, he might as well have sacrificed two, but Paris had to admit, if he had been in the trader's position and he had an attractive woman who was being held by the Kazon, he might have done the same thing. He wasn't quite ready to forgive the man yet; he wouldn't be until he saw B'Elanna and Harry back on the ships safely. _Seeing B'Elanna..._ He blinked at the thought. Somehow, in the course of this rescue mission, it hadn't quite sunken in that he was actually be _seeing_ her again. He felt an odd sensation at the pit of his stomach at the thought.

His internal musings were interrupted by the captain. After deactivating the EMH, Janeway turned toward their guests. "Since you've come up, I was hoping you'd be willing go down beneath the surface with us, to help us find out people," she said to the young blond woman.

Kes looked confused. "The tunnel I came up has been sealed, Captain," she replied. "I don't know of any other way down."

"We have technology that will allow us to beam through the rock directly to the settlement," Janeway replied. "Once we're there, however, we're going to need a guide."

Neelix shook his head vehemently. "No, Captain," he said. "Now that Kes is safe, we're going to be leaving this sector immediately."

"Neelix, these people risked their lives to rescue me," Kes protested.

"_I _rescued you," he insisted.

"With their help," she said forcefully. She turned her attention to Janeway. "Of course I'll help you, Captain. It's the least I can do."

Janeway softened slightly at the woman's words, then nodded. "I'll let you know when we're ready to leave. In the meantime, you should stay here and rest. You've been through quite a lot already today."

---

After sending Paris, Addison, Neelix, and Kes off to investigate the tunnels for any sight of the two missing crewmembers, Captains Janeway and Chakotay walked silently, accompanied only by Tuvok, who rarely felt the need to say anything anyway.

"What can you tell me about Ms. Torres?" Janeway finally asked, breaking the silence.

"You mean you don't have that information already?" Chakotay retorted, glancing pointedly at Tuvok, who merely raised an eyebrow in response.

"The details were rather thin," Janeway said, ignoring his dig on her crewmember. "I understand she was an Academy cadet, and later a lieutenant in the Klingon Defense Force, but that's about it."

"That's about all there is to it," Chakotay said with a sigh. "I'm sure you're aware of her Academy record, especially near the end. After all, word of the Nova Squadron incident reached out to the Beta quadrant, where I was the first officer on the _Packard_."

Janeway frowned as she tried to place what he was talking about. She didn't know how old Torres was or how long ago she had been at the Academy, but she knew from reading Chakotay's file that the _Packard_ was his last assignment before he resigned to join the Maquis, meaning the incident happened between one and five years ago. "Was that when the Nova Squadron leaders were expelled for filing false reports against one of their engineers?"

"That's right," Chakotay confirmed. "And that engineer was B'Elanna Torres. She was found to be innocent, but she left the Academy right after that and finished her degree on Qo'noS."

"And joined the Defense Force?"

He nodded. There wasn't much else he could say to her that didn't have the potential to spark an inter-quadrant incident. With the alliance between the Klingons and the Federation, they were supposed to be uninvolved in the Maquis conflict, but Klingons didn't do uninvolved very well, especially when it came to fights they found honorable—and things didn't get much more honorable than fighting to defend one's home. If Janeway found out that the Defense Force had given the Maquis technology and personnel, she would have to tell her superiors, and more than eighty years of peace between the two worlds would be at risk. It was easier to make things up as he went. "I don't know much other than that," he said, hoping his tone was apologetic and hoping that Tuvok didn't know more than he let on. "She's a very private person. She doesn't talk about her past at all. It was like pulling teeth just to get her to tell us her name." Tuvok raised an eyebrow at this, but remained silent.

"I see," Janeway murmured with a nod. "How is she in situations like this? Do you think this is something she could handle?"

Chakotay couldn't keep from bursting out laughing. "Sorry, Captain," he said after he recovered. "She's Klingon trained, remember? She's not only capable of surviving, she'll break the necks of anyone who stands in her way." He decided not to give his own personal example of that nearly happening.


	12. Chapter 12

B'Elanna Torres glanced behind her and sighed heavily. "Oh, come on, Starfleet," she complained. "At this rate, we're never going to make it to the surface." Despite her words, she knew she could use a rest, and took the opportunity to take a seat on the steps. They had been climbing the ancient staircases through the ancient tunnels for hours, although it felt much longer. The _Val Jean_ and the Badlands seemed like such distant memories she wondered if she had experienced them at all.

"I'm sorry," Ensign Harry Kim said weakly. "Maybe it would help if I had some Klingon blood in me." He knew he should have been kicking himself for vocalizing what should have remained an internal quiery; after his joke that had fallen flat in the clinic earlier, he wasn't sure how she'd take a comment about her heritage. At the moment, though, he was too tired to care.

Apparently, so was she. Instead of glaring or snapping at him, she just snorted. "It's more trouble than it's worth. Almost got me kicked out of the Academy a few times."

"I remember the Nova Squadron thing the end of my first year," Kim replied. He also remembered what it was like to have her as a tutor—demanding, unyielding, and very impatient with wrong answers. She had left the room a few times during some of those tutoring sessions, probably to keep from hitting him out of frustration. He was glad she showed enough restraint for that.

"Which was right after the Interspecies Protocol thing," Torres added with a roll of her eyes. "Those were just two in a long line if events that marked my short years at the Academy. Sometimes I wonder why I bothered to stay that long." Even as she said those words, she knew what--or rather, who--the answer to that was. She forced the thought from her mind as she leaned against the cold stone and clay wall, her eyes closing in her fatigue.

Kim didn't respond as he pushed his hair away from his forehead. "I spent my entire life preparing for a career in Starfleet. I studied, I trained, I did the right extracurricular activities, and for what? Here I am, on my first mission, and I'm going to die."

"You're not going to die," Torres said emphatically. She opened her eyes again as she smirked. "Believe me, I know quite a few things that Sneezy didn't teach in his Survival Strategies course."

He smiled slightly at her use of Commander Zakarian's nickname. "He didn't teach much useful, anyway."

She chuckled as she thought back to that first year course. Commander Zakarian hadn't been much of an instructor; if it weren't for Tom Paris' help, she probably wouldn't have passed the course. She sighed and closed her eyes again at the second intrusion of Paris into her thoughts in so many minutes. That spirit quest must still be messing with her head. She hadn't thought about him so much since six months after she left the Academy, when she made a conscious effort to get him out of her head. "Okay, break time's over," she said brusquely as she stood. "We still have a long way to go."

He was a little thrown off by her sudden change in attitude, but grudgedly got to his feet. "I don't know if I can do this, Torres. Every time I take a step, I just keep thinking that I hope it's not my last."

"Then think about something else," she said in a tone that had the potential to be forceful if she weren't so tired. She couldn't remember a time in her life when she had felt so fatigued. Not even when she was a final-semester student at the Klingon Institute of Engineering, studying for her finals and competiting in combatives on less than four hours of sleep.

He didn't say anything for a moment as they continued their climb. "Okay, how about this? Why'd you leave the Academy?"

She took a second to glance back at him before sighing. That seemed to be the question of the Delta quadrant; first Chakotay, now Kim. "So now it's _my_ job to distract you?" She sighed again. "Fine. After the Nova Squadron incident and the inquiry, there just wasn't a place there for me anymore."

"But I thought it was the Nova Squadron leader who was found responsible. Wasn't he expelled?"

"Yeah," she replied softly. "Locarno was kicked out, and so was Hajar, the navigator, but everyone—the admirals, the investigators, the other students—wanted so much for me to be guilty so they could get rid of me. I realized that if nobody wanted me there, why should I make them put up with me? As soon as my last final was over, I packed up my stuff and headed for Qo'noS. I finished my degree at the Klingon Institute of Engineering, and after I graduated, I applied for a commission in the Defense Force. My mother had been an officer before she met my father. She thought it would be a good experience for me."

He grunted as he pulled himself up another stair. "So how did you end up with the Maquis?"

She didn't answer as she pulled herself up a few more stairs. Winat Gial's story wasn't hers to tell, although it had a strong influence on her decision. She didn't know what she could tell him, considering the truce between the Empire and the Federation, but decided to just be honest. Seventy thousand light-years from either planet, she figured he deserved that much. "The High Council was interested in the Maquis conflict," she finally said. "The Maquis needed good engineers, and the Klingons have plenty. I was assigned to Chakotay's cell." It was slightly more complicated than that; she had volunteered for the mission as soon as she found out about it, but Kim didn't need to know that, and she didn't feel like explaining. When bit players like Gial and Koner got involved, the story got complicated.

She stopped suddenly and turned toward the rail, looking down at the tunnel at what they had already covered. Kim was about to ask what she was looking for, but she held up a hand to stop his words. "Did you hear that?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Kim frowned; he hadn't heard anything, but then again, he wasn't listening for anything. Try as he might, he couldn't make out any sounds other than the pulses from the array and his own pulse in his ears. "I think someone's coming," she said, still whispering.

"Thank the gods," Kim muttered as he collapsed back down to a seated position on the steps. Someone was coming. They were going to make it back to the ship. They were going to make it home.


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: I was tempted to leave you with that cliff-hanger for a couple of days, but while I am mean, I'm not that mean :) Enjoy!_

* * *

Lt. Tom Paris glanced down at his tricorder and frowned slightly in concentration before turning to Addison. There was a lot of background noise from the energy pulses as well as the natural elements of the planet, but... "I think they're in this one," he said.

Addison pulled out his own tricorder and nodded. "I'm reading lifesigns up ahead," he confirmed. He glanced over at his friend. "Two lifesigns."

Paris nodded once before he tapped his combadge. "Paris to Janeway. They're up ahead of us. I can't see them yet, but I'm reading lifesigns in the tunnel. It shouldn't be long before we meet up with them."

_*Good job, Mr. Paris.*_ The voice, as always, sounded tinny over the comm, more so as it echoed in the tunnel. _*We're going back to the ship. We'll see you there.*_

"Understood. Paris out." He closed the comm link and increased his already quick pace, almost running up the rickety staircase. He began to feel the pressure in his lungs from the exertion, but ignored it. For the first time, he wished he had been on the track team at the Academy instead of Nova Squadron.

Apparently, Kim and Torres hadn't been moving very quickly up the stairs; despite the length of time the nurse had said it was since they left the settlement, it hadn't taken Paris, Addison, Neelix, and Kes long to catch up to them. Paris reached them first, slightly out of breath from his rapid ascent. He saw Kim first, several steps below the half-Klingon. "About time you showed up," Kim managed, a slight smile playing on his cracked lips.

Paris bent down to help him up, putting himself just about at eye level with B'Elanna Torres. The two stared at each other for a moment without saying anything. Paris tried to read the emotions in her eyes; she looked relieved, grateful, embarrassed, defiant, and several other descriptors he couldn't come up with, all at once. Or maybe he was projecting, seeing either what he felt or imagined she should feel. "I don't let my friends just run off and disappear without putting up a fight," he joked as he helped Kim to his feet. He said it to the young ensign, but he could tell from the flush of Torres' cheeks that she knew it was directed at her.

When she first saw Paris approaching them on the stairs, she was sure she had finally gone delusional; the combination of the strange alien sickness and the exertion had made her lose her mind. First there was the spirit guest and that damned cat saying things that made her wonder about the depth of her own feelings toward him. Since then, she couldn't get him out of her mind for the first time in years, and then she was starting to see him. It took her a moment to realize that he was really there, he had really come to save them—well, came to save Harry. She didn't even bother to let herself believe that his presence had anything to do with her. When she left the Academy more than three years before, she told him she didn't know if she was going to be coming back, which wasn't entirely true—she was certain she would never set foot on that campus again. He wrote her letters for the first six months, asking how she was doing, inquiring as to when she was coming back. She was always tempted to write back, to tell him that it had nothing to do with him, but knew that was a lie; it had everything to do with him, just not in the way he might think. She never knew how to say that, so she didn't say anything. Eventually, the letters stopped, which was just fine with her. She didn't need that constant reminder of what she had turned her back on.

She stared at him for a moment, slightly confused about his presence, trying to figure out what that look on his face meant. He looked older than the last time she had seen him, but it was more than just the slightly thinner hair or extra pip on his collar. He looked more serious, more intense, and that look was focused on her. She felt herself flush under that gaze, just as she used to back when she was a teenaged cadet and he was the hotshot test pilot who came by once a week to take her out to dinner. _Damned alien disease_, she scolded herself as she forced herself to look away, but she was sure what she was thinking had nothing to do with the nodules growing on her arms.

After he got Kim to his feet, he continued to stare down at her for a moment. Finally, he spoke. "You owe me a letter," he said in a falsely chipper tone that she knew meant he was using humor to avoid what he was really feeling. Angry at his words and his façade, she just glared back at him as she pulled herself to her feet.

She was surprised a second later when she felt a strong arm wrap around her waist to keep her standing. "Addison," she stated. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I couldn't just leave my plebe behind," he joked, pulling them both up the stairs.

She gave him the strongest glare she could muster under the circumstances. "I was _never_ your plebe!"

"I know," he replied softly. "You were Tom's plebe." She didn't have anything to say to that, and they continued their ascent in silence.

After passing through the security barrier—a tight squeeze even for the two diminutive women, dangerously so for the men—they climbed further until they reached a point where there were no steps. At first, Paris was furious at the thought of coming all that way only to be led to a dead end, but then he remembered what Ensign Rollins had said about the blasts from the array sealing the access points. "I think we're at the top," he told his assembled group. Torres immediately removed the tool she had been carrying, preparing to use it to burst their way through. He couldn't help but grin at the primitiveness of the plan and the fact that it was so Torres: if something is standing in her way, she just knocks it down by force. "Neelix, do you still have that phaser with you?" he asked the furry Talaxian as he removed his own from his belt. "Stand back," he warned the others. A few minutes later, they were staring at the bright blue sky through a hole barely bigger than the one in the force field they had just squeezed through.

Getting up and out wouldn't be easy. The hole was easily three meters off the ground, which wouldn't be a problem for Paris, considering his long history of rock climbing. Ryan was in the same boat. A few years ago, he would have been able to say confidently that Torres wouldn't have any problems scaling the wall, after having gone climbing with her several times, but he didn't know if she remembered any of the mechanics of it at all. He couldn't speak for the others.

He scaled the short distance along the wall, hauling himself out with a grunt. He took the time to stand and glance around briefly. This part of the planet looked just the same as the other, when they had their encounter with the Kazon: dry, brown, and hot. Not a drop of water in sight. Not exactly his ideal vacation spot.

He turned back to the hole and helped pull the others out. Kes, he wasn't surprised to discover, was very light and agile. Neelix was a little heavier, and much less graceful, but between the two already at the surface, and possibly the three below, they managed to get him up without any difficulty. Next came Kim, and from his position at the top, Paris heard Addison and Torres argue about who should go up next. Ryan insisted that Torres should go next, so he could help lift her from the bottom, but she argued that she was an experienced rock climber and wouldn't _need_ lifting. Addison had to practically throw her out of the tunnel to end the argument.

Once all were out of the tunnel, Paris tapped his combadge. "Paris to _Voyager_," he began. His words were cut off by the sound of an incoming charge from the array. "Get down!" he barked at the group. They practically dove for the ground, keeping as low as possible as the ground shook violently.

Paris glanced back at the hole they had just climbed through to find it partially collapsed. "Paris to Janeway," he said, his previous attempt to contact the ship forgotten. "Captain, please respond." There was no answer.

He turned back to the Starfleet officer, observer, Maquis rebel, and two Delta quadrant natives in his care. "I'm going to go back for them," he informed them. He tapped his combadge again. "Paris to _Voyager_. Beam up everyone in this group except for me."

"You're not going down alone," Addison retorted. "I'm going with you."

"So am I," Neelix declared.

Paris studied the short alien for a second before shaking his head brusquely. "You need to stay with them," he said in a tone that left no room for argument. He tapped his combadge again. "Lock on to Neelix's combadge, and beam those four directly to sickbay. And make sure the EMH is activated." He didn't know if the program automatically kicked in when someone beamed into sickbay, but this wasn't the time to find out. Without really knowing why, he took a brief second to rest his hand on the small of Torres' back, feeling the slight ridges of her spine through the Ocampan tunic. Her eyes, wide with surprise, met his, and she stared at him for a second without changing her expression. There was nothing to be said. He stepped back as he watched them disappear in the blue haze of the transporter.

"So, are you going to tell her?" Addison asked as they jumped down into the hole and started running back toward the stairs.

"Tell who what?" Paris asked distractedly, pulling out his tricorder to search for lifesigns.

Addison gave him a look and rolled his eyes. "Tell Torres that you're still in love with her."

Paris glanced sharply at his friend before returning his attention to the stairs. "I was never in love with her."

Addison rolled his eyes again. His best friend certainly was stubborn, and he wasn't surprised that Paris would be the last to admit what everyone else had been able to see since they were all Academy cadets. "Well, fine, argue semantics," he finally replied, knowing how pointless it would be to press the point and give a hundred examples that demonstrated just how hard his best friend had fallen for the half-Klingon. "You should tell her you're still interested. She's not the kid she once was. If there's one thing joining up with the Maquis does, it makes you grow up fast."

"That's the problem, Ry," Paris replied, wincing at Addison's reminder of their conversation the night before as he was still trying to figure out where the commanding officers were. "She's in the Maquis, and as you so kindly pointed out, I'm Starfleet's poster boy. As soon as we get home, they're all going to be joining you in New Zealand. Not exactly the best circumstances for starting a relationship."

"Please," Addison scoffed. "You don't seriously think we're making it back to the Alpha quadrant, do you? Those kinds of things just don't happen." He glanced sideways at Paris. "As I see it, you're going to have seventy years to convince her that you were never really all that interested in just being friends in the first place." He braced himself as another blast hit the planet. "You know, Tom, despite how much I teased you about it, I was never upset about you stealing my plebe. You guys were good for each other. Don't let her get away again."

Paris grunted as he reached the captain. "Since when did you have such an interest in my love life?"

"Just trying to show you I'm really not a twenty-two-year-old cadet anymore," Addison said with a grin as he rushed forward to help Chakotay. Paris went directly toward his captain.

"I'm okay," Janeway said, sounding a bit out of breath as Paris helped her to her feet. "Help Addison with Chakotay."

"Aye, Captain," he replied as he handed her off to Lt. Tuvok. He took a second to watch to make sure his two superior officers were on their way up the stairs again before turning his gaze to the two men a few steps below him and the scene that was unfolding right before his eyes.

"Get out of here, Addison!" Chakotay said through gritted teeth.

"Not until I get you to the surface," Addison replied, inching forward on the barely-attached staircase. "Now are you going to help me or not?"

"Whatever happened to watching out for yourself first?" Chakotay asked as he tried to lean forward toward his former crewmember.

"I never really paid that much attention to what you said, anyway," Addison joked, grabbing Chakotay around the shoulders and lifting him up. He grunted against the extra weight, but even though his former commander had a few centimeters on him, Addison was more powerfully built. "Geez, Chakotay, have you put on weight? I always knew you were lying when you complained about how much you hated the taste of Cardie rations."

"Maybe you just need to work out more," the older man replied as the tunnel shook with another blast. They both heard the distinctive creaking sound of tearing metal as the staircase moved further away from the wall.

"Hand him up!" Paris called out from his position on the platform of a more stable section of the staircase. "That piece can't hold both of your weights!"

Addison grunted as he hefted Chakotay toward Paris' waiting arm. "With all that meditating you do, I'd think you'd know how to turn yourself into some sort of bird by now."

"I left my akoonah on the ship," Chakotay replied as he tried to get a more stable position on the platform. Paris wasn't much help—he was taller than either Addison or Chakotay, but more slender. He didn't have the strength to pull Chakotay forward alone, and Addison had to help from his already precarious position.

"Come on, Ryan, give me your hand," Paris called down after Chakotay was entirely on the platform. He leaned forward as far as he could, but was still short of Addison's outstretched hand.

Addison also leaned toward his friend, but his shifting position caused the joints to creak again. "This thing's going to collapse," he said, trying to stabilize himself.

"That's fine by me," Paris said, straining to lean even further. "Just as long as you're not on it anymore." Wrapping his free arm around the railing, he reached forward, grabbing hold of his former roommate's wrist. He started to pull Ryan toward him when another blast hit the tunnel. That time, the lower piece of the staircase ripped from his joints to the wall. Addison felt the stairs fall from below his feet and released his hold on Paris' wrist in surprise.

"NO!" Paris yelled as Ryan's wrist slipped from his hand. He flailed, trying to grab a hold again, but it was no use. "Ryan!" he called out as he watched Addison tumble down toward the floor of the cavern, more than two kilometers below. He was still staring in disbelief as the shaking stopped.


	14. Chapter 14

Lt. Tom Paris was trying to get a fix on his surroundings as he focused on one thing at a time, which was just about as much as his mind could handle. Over in the surgical bay, the EMH was running an osteoregenerator over Chakotay's leg. Captain Janeway was standing between him and Paris, and kept glancing his way with a sympathetic look in her eyes. Lt. Tuvok was standing by her, wearing an expression that could only be described as Vulcan. Ensign Kim was on a biobed, back in uniform, looking around sickbay as if trying to figure out what was going on. Torres was seated on the biobed next to him, back in Maquis fatigues. Paris frowned slightly at that—how did she get her fatigues on _Voyager_? Were the sickbay replicators capable of producing leather vests, tight red pants, and leather boots that went above her knees? Did someone from her ship beam them over? It was easier for him to question such things than actually spend time thinking about what just happened—one second, he had Ryan's wrist in his hand, the next, he was watching his best friend fall to his death.

He shuddered slightly, then forcefully shoved that thought into the back of his mind and pulled himself to the present. Kim was looking at him with a slightly quizzical expression on his face; had somebody asked him a question that he hadn't heard? He was about to ask when the comm system chirped overhead. _*Bridge to the captain,*_ Ensign Rollin's now-familiar voice called out. _*Two Kazon ships are approaching.*_

Captain Janeway pulled her gaze away from test pilot she had "borrowed" and glanced around sickbay, her eyes widening. "We're on our way," she replied. Her first officer was dead, and she was in sickbay, surrounded by her chief of security, conn officer, and ops officer. Who was left to be manning the bridge? "Mr. Kim, Mr. Paris," she said, shoving aside the feelings of concern. "If you're feeling up to it—"

"I'm fine, ma'am. Captain," Kim said quickly, flushing slightly with the mistake as he hopped off the biobed.

"Wait! I haven't released you yet!" the EMH protested. They all ignored him.

"We need to get back to our ship," Chakotay told Torres. She glanced very briefly at Paris with an unreadable expression, then nodded brusquely as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and strode confidently to the door. Paris smirked slightly when he saw Kim's eyes widen at the sight—it wasn't every day a young Starfleet officer got to see a trim half-Klingon in tight pants and boots like that walk away. He decided he wouldn't ever tell the young ensign about the clingy low-cut dress Siobhan Patel had Torres wear for her first Rigel Cup mixer; he didn't want to give the poor kid a stroke.

---

Chakotay glanced around, slightly uncertain as he tried to remember the way to the transporter room. _That's the problem with Starfleet ships_, he thought to himself. _Every corridor looks exactly the same_. He couldn't even remember if they were on the right deck.

"So, I take it there's something between you and Lt. Paris?" he asked conversationally as he glanced over his shoulder to see B'Elanna Torres still matching his quick pace.

He missed the glare she gave him. "Not that it's any of your business, but no," she replied, her tone making it clear that it was not a topic she was going to discuss.

Chakotay grunted as they passed through the doors to Transporter Room One. He didn't believe her—he saw the way she avoided looking at the blond pilot, and saw the way the Starfleet officer looked at her. He had seen men look at the young engineer before, most of the time without her noticing, but that look was different. He figured the two had some sort of history. "You sure about that?" he asked as they stepped onto the platform. She was still glaring when they rematerialized on their bridge.

"Torres to Seska," she barked into the comm system as she took her seat at the engineering console. "What's the status of our engines?"

_*We might be able to survive,*_ the Bajoran's dry voice replied. Torres rolled her eyes and checked her consoles.

"Well?" Chakotay asked, his attention already on his own panel. "Can we do this?"

"Depends on what we're doing," Torres replied. "Are we sticking around and fighting, or getting our asses out of here?"

He grunted. "What can you give me?"

She scanned through the data on her console. "We might be able to get up to warp four, but not for long. Phaser banks are fully charged, amazingly enough after that last stunt you insisted on pulling with Gul Evek."

"Then I guess we're staying to fight," Chakotay told her, his voice grim. As soon as he said the words, he sent the ship into a roll to get in a good position.

"Kahless!" she exclaimed as her knees went into the console. "Some warning would have been nice!"

"I said we're going to fight," Chakotay told her grimly. He wasn't in the mood for one of her temper tantrums. "Just keep those engines running."

She grumbled something under her breath that he didn't catch and figured he didn't want to. She punched at her console with much more force than was necessary and opened the comm link to engineering again to begin yelling orders to the crewmembers down there. He was tempted to tell to just get down there and take care of it herself, but knew that in a crunch, it was better to have her on the bridge.

_*Janeway to Chakotay,*_ _Voyager_'s captain said in a hail. _*Lt. Tuvok and I are going over the array. Do you think you can handle the Kazon for a few minutes?*_

He was tempted to reply that he was sure her crew was well enough trained to be able to fire their own phasers in her absence, but bit back the remark. She was extending the olive branch by including his small little ship in the fight, which was a pretty big gesture coming from such a by-the-books officer. "I think so, Captain," he said instead. He saw Torres shaking her head emphatically, but ignored it. She had pulled off miracles before; this time should be no different.

They worked in silence for a few minutes, she giving him more power where he needed it without him saying anything. Suddenly, she gave a long, vicious-sounding Klingon curse. "We have company," she said grimly, nodding her head toward the viewscreen. Even though he had seen the signs of the large ship on his sensors, he glanced over to take a look. It was quite an ugly ship, even worse than the monstrosities the Cardassians flew around in.

The smaller ship he had been firing at seemed to be taking cover behind the large one, so he turned his attention to it. Apparently, targeting sensors weren't one of Torres' crew's top priorities in repairs; he didn't know where on the ship to focus his fire to do them any damage, or even take out their weapons. Fortunately, it seemed to be ignoring him in favor of _Voyager_, giving him some time for trial and error firing.

"Their weapons array was hit," Chakotay reported, referring to the Starfleet ship in front of him. Why was he able to get _that_ on his sensors instead of something a little more useful? "They're in trouble."

Torres grunted in agreement. "Neither of us has the fire power to hold off that thing," she said angrily.

"I thought you said the phaser banks were powered," he replied.

She scoffed. "We _never_ had the fire power for that kind of ship," she said disdainfully. "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times—"

"I know, I know. This ship is more useless than an arthritic _targ_, not even worthy of a scrap yard," he interrupted. "Well, there's one thing these thirty-nine-year-old engines are good for. I've set a collision course. Get the crew ready for transport over to _Voyager_." She opened her mouth to argue, but he stopped her. "Just do it!"

She was about to ask why he wasn't getting the crew ready, but she figured this wasn't the best time to start an argument with him. She quickly rose from her seat, tapping her communicator on her wrist as she headed toward the berths in the rear compartment. "Torres to all hands," she said. "Stop whatever you're doing. We're abandoning the ship. If there's anything you care about in your berths, I suggest you get it now." She closed the channel before the questions could start to come in. She knew she didn't have answers to any of them.

One of the fortunate things about being on a ship so small for anybody to have any personal space is that nobody had anything unpacked. All of Torres' possessions, much like her crewmates, were in the duffle she kept under her berth. She grunted as she pulled it out, surprised at how heavy it seemed. _What do I have in here? _she wondered as she headed in the direction of the transporter room. She didn't think she opened it more than five times since arriving on Chakotay's ship; most of the time, she just pulled her boots off and slept in her fatigues, putting them in the refresher while she was in the sonic shower. She felt something hard and flat in the bag hit her side as the force of another blast sent her into the bulkhead. The _bat'leth_ her grandfather had made for her when she was commissioned into the defense force. Without knowing why, she mentally ran through an inventory of the bag's contents as she continued down the corridor. Some clothes, a few pairs of heeled boots that weren't nearly as menacing as the ones she was currently wearing, some PADDs, her good toolkit. _And a bottle of French champagne_. She just about stopped moving when she realized that that was still in there. She didn't know why she still had it; she had swiped it from a New Year's party almost four years before, mostly for Tom's amusement. She had wanted to open it then, but he insisted she hold on to it. They agreed they would share it when she graduated or he was promoted, whichever came first. Well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Torres watched most of her crewmates rush past her toward the transporter room, their duffles similarly slung over their shoulders. She passed Chakotay's room, the only "private" room on board, a ready room of sorts which doubled as his quarters, thanks to the cot he had set up in there. Even though he had enough space to unpack, Chakotay kept his belongings in a duffle, just like the rest of his crew—when you live fast, you have to be ready to leave fast. She grabbed it, making sure it had the things he would want, namely his akoonah and medicine wheel, and hefted it onto her free shoulder with a curse; it was even heavier than hers. Without a second glance into the room, she headed for the corridor.

"Let's get out of here," she said as she entered the transporter room and did a quick count to confirm that everyone was there. Hogan quickly tapped the controls, then joined the rest on the platform.

Torres hadn't bothered to think ahead as to what she would do once they beamed over to _Voyager_, and found herself slightly out-of-sorts in the transporter room she had just left from so recently. Without giving herself an opportunity to talk herself out of it, she shrugged off the duffles and placed them on the ground. "Ayala," she barked out. "Watch the stuff." She didn't give him a chance to argue as she turned and headed out the transporter room, toward the nearest turbolift.

As she stepped off the turbolift onto the bridge, she immediately made her way to the front of the room—right next to where Lt. Tom Paris was expertly manning the helm controls. She tried to keep her eyes fixed on the viewscreen in front of her as Chakotay's ship got closer and closer to that Kazon monstrosity, but she couldn't help but glance down at the pilot seated next to her. His hands were moving quickly over the controls, his face locked in an expression of concentration, but he seemed almost calm about it. She remembered her first Rigel Cup competition, when she had been monitoring him during finals. She remembered how calm he was while flying, how he instinctively knew exactly what to do and when to do it. That hadn't changed.

Despite trying to do three or four things at once, Paris glanced up quickly at the Maquis engineer standing beside him. Their eyes locked for a moment before they both looked away. He wished he knew what to say, but fighting off three alien vessels while making sure the array his captain was on didn't get hit wasn't the most conducive environment for striking up a conversation.

Torres held her breath as she heard Chakotay give the order to be beamed over, releasing it only after she heard him confirm that he was okay. _Well, that's the one thing we have going for us_, she thought darkly, realizing that with their ship fused to the side of the Kazon vessel, they really were captured. Well, she had always heard New Zealand was nice this time of year.

"Damn it," she heard Paris mutter, his eyes fixed on the viewscreen, showing the large ship slowly drifting toward the array where Captain Janeway and Lt. Tuvok were supposedly talking to the Caretaker about getting them home. Calculating vectors quickly in her head, she realized the ship was heading for one of the spikes to the side of the array, not the main part itself, where she assumed the command center would be. She saw Paris' shoulders relax slightly, and knew he had realized the same thing.

She looked up when she heard the turbolift doors open, and headed back to meet up with Chakotay. He looked surprised for a second to see her standing there instead of in the transporter room with the rest of the crew, but he got over it. "I got your stuff," she said quietly as they both stood back and watched the battle around them. He nodded once, the only indication he gave that he had heard what she said.

A few minutes later, they both turned when they heard the turbolift open again, this time revealing the captain and security chief. "Mr. Tuvok, ready the tricobalt devices," Janeway ordered as she marched toward her chair. "And hail the lead Kazon ship."

"Channel open," the Vulcan replied.

"I advise you to move away," the captain said coldly once the face of the Kazon maje appeared. "I intend to destroy the array."

"What?" Torres heard herself hiss, quiet enough that she doubted anyone heard her.

"You can't do that!" the Kazon protested.

"I can, and I will," Janeway retorted. "End transmission." Torres noticed the surprised expression on Chakotay's face; clearly, he hadn't seen this coming, either. "Mr. Paris, move us four hundred kilometers away," Janeway ordered.

That was enough. "What do you think you're doing?" Torres asked angrily, making her way toward the captain she hadn't really met. "That array is our only way home!" For as much as she wasn't looking forward to serving time in a Federation penal colony, the idea sure sounded better than being trapped in the Delta quadrant for the next seventy years or so.

"I'm aware that everyone has loved ones back home," Janeway said softly to her. "But I'm not willing to trade the lives of the Ocampa just so we can see them again. We'll have to find another way home."

"_What_ other way?" Torres exclaimed, frustrated as the captain turned her back to her. She looked around the bridge, but saw only blank stares in disbelief. "Who is _she_ to be making these decisions for us?" Torres asked Chakotay.

"She's the captain," he said quietly. Torres froze at those words, realizing that he was right; she was the captain. They were on her ship. No, not only that; they were _prisoners_ on her ship. She could do whatever she damned well pleased. She remained silent as the captain gave the order to fire on the array, and watched quietly as she saw her only way home explode into a few million pieces of debris.


	15. Chapter 15

Tom Paris rubbed his eyes. It had been quite the week: he had been transported to the other side of the galaxy, ran into probably the last person he ever expected to see again, watched his best friend fall to his death, and played his part in destroying the one piece of technology that could get them home. Yes, this was a week to write home about. Too bad there would be no writing home for the next seventy years.

Captain Janeway had been kind enough to give him a few days off to collect himself, with the understanding that if anything happened, he would report to his station, no matter what time it was. So far, it had been fairly quiet; the Kazon were keeping their distance, and nobody else appeared to be around in this part of space. Nobody except the Talaxian and Ocampan, Neelix and Kes, who had decided to stay on _Voyager_. Why they would want to take part in a futile trip toward the Alpha quadrant was beyond him.

He sighed as he watched the holoimages cross the screen of the small monitor in his quarters, pictures of Ryan taken over the years. For the first day after The Fall, as he took to thinking about it, he had studied them carefully, trying to figure out exactly when his best friend became the Maquis rebel destined to die on some dried-up planet on the other side of the galaxy. Had it been there when they were fourteen, meeting for the first time during orientation at Starfleet Preparatory Academy? Or maybe at eighteen, co-captains of the flight team taking two of the most popular girls in school to the prom, just to say that they did? Could any of them have been able to tell as they shot pool in Sandrine's bar after finals what would become of him?

He was about to turn off the trip down memory lane when a sudden image made him stop. He leaned over and paused the slideshow on that picture, studying it carefully. It hadn't come up over the last few days, and he forgot he had it. They were at the Rigel Cup mixer their senior year, drinking to something, glasses in mid-air. Siobhan Patel was wearing a strapless green dress that left nothing to the imagination, making a face at Ryan. He was in a rust-colored coat that, when combined with his red hair, made him seem almost monochromatic. They were all laughing at something Ryan had said, but Tom's eyes weren't on his friend; they were locked on the dark eyes of a half-Klingon engineer in a deep red dress, hair pinned back behind her ears, dark curls falling halfway down her back. Ryan's words rang in his ears: _You have seventy years to convince her that you were never really all that interested in just being friends in the first place._

Angrily, he leaned over and turned off the console. Sure, that same half-Klingon engineer may now be just five decks down and three sections over, but it wasn't as if they could just pick up where they left off and forget the things that had happened between them, the way she just left, not to be heard from again. As he saw it, he was better off washing his hands of her. He recalled a conversation that happened almost five years before, facing an inactive fountain in the December cold of San Francisco: _You're trouble, aren't you?_ They had laughed about it then, but then she had proven just how true that statement was. B'Elanna Torres was trouble.

He sighed at the dark thought and glanced at his chronometer. Eighteen hundred. Even though he wasn't hungry, he knew he should eat something. He padded over to the replicator, then groaned when he remembered they were off-line. If it weren't for that, and the fact that Captain Janeway kept the rations in the mess hall, he wouldn't have left his quarters for the last few days.

With another sigh, he turned and headed for the door.

---

B'Elanna Torres ran her hands through her jaw-length hair as she stood in the corridor, finding herself idly wishing that she had never cut it off. _Stop it_, she chastised herself. This wasn't about her hair, and she knew it.

She didn't know how long she had been standing there, debating whether or not she should hit the announcer chime. Part of her didn't even know why she was there; what would she say, anyway? That she was sorry she had never returned six months worth of letters, or remained silent for three years after that? Express her sympathy for his—their?—dead friend? Tell him that she hoped they could be friends again? None of the potential conversations she had running through her head seemed all that plausible.

Finally deciding it was a bad idea, she turned slightly to move away when the door slid open. She turned back quickly in surprise to find herself standing less than a meter away from an equally surprised Tom Paris.

Neither knew how long they just stood there, half in the corridor and half in his quarters, just looking at each other. He looked like it had been a rough couple of days, which after losing his best friend since high school, it probably had been. His hair was standing in a dozen directions, his cheeks covered in what had to be more than a day's stubble, but those bright blue eyes were just as clear as ever, fixing her with a gaze she couldn't quite interpret.

A thousand thoughts were running through Paris' head, moving faster than warp speed. Literally seconds after deciding he didn't want anything to do with her, the Maquis engineer was standing in front of his quarters, looking just as surprised to see him as he was to see her. _No_, he corrected himself, _Klingon engineer, not Maquis_. He had heard the whole story from Harry, who pretty much confirmed that what she said in those tunnels matched what Addison had told him before. He didn't know why the thought of her in the Klingon Defense Force was any better than the thought of her in the Maquis; after all, Ryan had joined the Maquis at their very beginning, and that never bothered him at all. Of course, the fight with the Cardassians had been Ryan's fight—his parents had died protecting the colony they had grown to love, and he left Starfleet to continue that. It wasn't Torres' fight; her joining with Chakotay would have been just a search for something else to take her anger out on.

Despite his conflicts about how he felt, he had to admit, she looked good. She had always looked more relaxed when she was out of uniform, as she was now, wearing a loose tunic and dark pants and heeled boots similar to the ones she had worn when out of uniform at the Academy. He remembered seeing her in a Starfleet uniform on the bridge a few days before, looking uncomfortable as Janeway had given that speech about how they were going to make it home. He had figured the captain would offer her a cross-commission, but he hadn't bothered to look at her close enough to see what kind of pips, if any, she was wearing on her collar. He realized that suddenly that with the chief engineer dead, she could possibly be the highest ranked officer in that department now. He figured she was a shoe-in for that role; she had been a damned good engineer three years ago and ready to be chief of the Nova Squadron engineers, and such an appointment by Janeway would help unify the crews, just as much as naming Chakotay her first officer.

Aside from his confidence in her engineering abilities, he still didn't know what to make of her, or of his thoughts and feelings about her. He had been confused when she told him that she was leaving for Qo'noS, but quickly got over it. He tried to contact her, only to have his transmissions remain unanswered. He tried writing her via subspace messages, but those too failed to get a response. Finally, after six months of faithfully writing once a week, he sent one last letter telling her that he got the hint, and if she changed her mind and wanted to talk to him, she knew how to reach him. He had been hurt and angry, thinking that after all they went through in the two years they had known each other, she owed him a little bit more than that.

Finally, she cleared her throat, breaking the silence that had fallen over them. She held up the two packs of Starfleet rations she had grabbed from the mess hall on a whim earlier that evening. "I know it's not pizza," she said haltingly. "But it _is_ Monday night, and I know this doesn't exactly qualify as being on the same planet, but..." Her voice trailed off as she realized that she was babbling and he was doing nothing to stop her.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had almost forgotten the weekly ritual, and hadn't expected that she would be the one to bring it up. He was almost tempted to simply close the door in response, to give her a taste of what it was like to be cut off so abruptly, but quickly dismissed that idea. His second impulse was to grin and make a joke, but he knew that she of all people wouldn't be convinced by the façade. Instead, he stepped aside to let her in.

They continued to watch each other warily for a few silent minutes as he cleared a space on the coffee table for their food. He found himself wishing she would say something, while at the same time not wanting to hear what she had to say. It was a strange mix of emotions that were flying through his head, that was for sure.

They were standing less than a meter apart when he finally straightened and faced her fully, and again, neither moved, both waiting for the other to say or do something. Ryan's words again rang through Paris' head: _You have seventy years to convince her that you were never really all that interested in just being friends in the first place. _His friend was right, as he often had been in his odd, roundabout way, but Tom found himself suddenly unwilling to wait seventy years for that to happen. Not giving himself any time to change his mind, he resolutely took a step forward, closing the space between them, and did something that he should have done two years before, something that would have changed the course of both of their lives if he had done it. He tilted her chin up and let her know, in no uncertain terms, exactly how he felt when he kissed her. She was surprised by the move for a second, but when he felt her give in and respond, he felt like for the first time in five years, since that first encounter as Ryan and he strode through campus looking for girls to pick up for that night, that things were finally making sense.

* * *

_A/N: The story originally ended at "Instead, he stepped aside and let her in", with the intention of continuing through the first season in another part, but that never really materialized I decided it was a somewhat unsatisfying end, all things considered. So I added the next two paragraphs. Due to popular demand, I'm going to give you one more chapter after this, an epilogue of sorts. It'll still be a few days until that happens; I have to write it from scratch, and I'm currently busy painting my new condo, but I'll make it worth your while :)_


	16. Chapter 16: Epilogue

Admiral Owen Paris stared out of his expansive windows at the foggy San Francisco skyline without seeing it, his mind still reeling from the news he had received barely two hours ago. _Tom's alive_, he kept thinking, the words running through his head like some sort of mantra, as if saying them to himself would make him believe them. It was such a paradigm shift from the last few years, since Admiral Anderson had approached him with stricken and concerned expression on his face and informed him that _Voyager_ had been lost in the Badlands, that he knew it would take awhile for them to set in. He tried to figure out if he felt any different, if knowing that his only son was alive on the other side of the galaxy had changed him, but in a way, it felt almost like the day after a birthday when he was a child—he had known on one level that he was a year older, but still felt like the same person and couldn't identify the affect of that day.

He had told Alicia as soon as he had gotten off the comm with Admiral Hart, of course, but even seeing the stunned and jubilant expression on his wife's face had done little to help those words sink in. In a way, it seemed like one of those old science fiction films from the twentieth century that Tom used to watch growing up—an outdated medical hologram, a 'blast from the past' in the form of a Mark I EMH, had appeared suddenly on a top secret prototype starship after engaging in battle with the enemy to bring news of a crew that was slowly but surely making their way home after being transported to the other side of the galaxy. If it had been any other situation, he would have laughed. Instead, he was still standing there in his office, watching the shuttles fly by and thinking of his son. _His son_. The surprise much-younger third child, the spoiled only son, the self-confident and talented pilot, the boy he had helped raise into a man capable of making his own decisions and standing up for what he believed in, for what he wanted for himself. He remembered the last time he had seen Tom, sitting out on the deck on a clear early-September evening, watching the lights of the ships and shuttles and stars overhead as they drank their beers and discussed Tom's ideas for a shuttle he wanted to build. In the year after finding out about _Voyager's_ disappearance, he had replayed that conversation a million times, wondering what he would have said differently or done differently had he known that that would be his last conversation with his son. He probably wouldn't have wished him a good night and told him that he would be gone in the morning by the time Tom awoke, but that he hoped _Voyager_ would fly well for his shakedown cruise and that he would see him in about a month. He had had so many regrets about the things he had said and hadn't said to Tom as he was growing up, and for a long time, hated himself because of those things. Now, he was torn: glad his son was alive, but wishing with his whole being that he could talk to him again so he could set some of those things straight. He couldn't even remember if he had ever told Tom how proud he was of the man and officer he had become.

"Sir?" He turned from his window to see one of his aides holding a PADD in front of him. "The team is done downloading the information from the EMH. There was a notation from Captain Janeway that you would probably want to see a few of these personnel files right away." The ensign paused. "There's also a file addressed to you from the chief engineer."

"The chief engineer?" Paris repeated with a frown. "Are you sure it was addressed to me and not the engineering teams at UP?"

"It's addressed to you, sir. The team doing the download checked three times. It's possible that there's been a corruption in the data, given the state of the EMH and the distance traveled, but as best as anyone could figure out, this is the file that you're meant to read."

"Okay, Ensign. Thank you." He accepted the PADD and returned to his desk. The aide, knowing a dismissal without having to be told, turned and left the office.

Paris glanced at the picture on his desk, one of only two pictures there, the one of Tom during a debate his first classman year at the Academy. He looked serious sitting in that board room, and not for the first time, the admiral couldn't figure out why that had been the picture he had kept of his son. It captured none of what made Tom, Tom—the humor, charisma, the light attitude, the confidence. He made a mental note to ask Alicia to help him find one of Tom in a Nova Squadron flight suit. _That_ was the Cadet Thomas Eugene Paris he remembered from those four years his son had been at Starfleet Academy.

He activated the PADD to find a directory of four items. The first three were marked 'Personnel file' followed by a Starfleet ID number, and the last was untitled, only bearing a download number from the team that had been studying the EMH Mark I since his arrival. He opened the first of the personnel files and found himself staring at a picture of his son.

Knowing Kathryn Janeway has he did—he had trained her, after all—she probably kept the personnel files up to date, despite their distance from Starfleet Command and any governing council, which told him that the picture would be one taken from within the year and the data current. Sure enough, the Thomas Paris he was staring at was older than the one he had talked to on the deck that night, although the uniform he was wearing had recently been put out of use. Owen smirked slightly to see the thinner hair on his son's head; he certainly hadn't been fortunate enough to inherit a full head of hair from either side of the family. Alicia's father had been bald by the time he turned thirty.

He skimmed through the personal data down to the service record. "Rank: Lieutenant (jg)," he read and winced slightly. Eight years since graduation from the Academy, Tom should be a full lieutenant or even a lieutenant commander by now. Promotions were slower to come by the Test Flight division, but Tom's CO had told Owen in confidence a few months before _Voyager_ had departed that Tom would be facing a promotion to full lieutenant within the year. Kathryn hadn't been so fortunate to have openings for rank advancement in the Delta Quadrant, he figured. He had to remind himself that Tom hadn't been concerned with rank and prestige, and that the fact that he was still a lieutenant junior grade probably didn't bother the young man at all. He forced himself to keep reading. "Position: flight controller, _USS Voyager._" He gave an almost sad chuckle at the irony of that. _Not_ being a flight controller was something Tom had felt so passionately about as a cadet first class that he had stood up to his father about it, to state his reasons for wanting to be a test pilot. It was that position in the test flight division that had put Tom on _Voyager_ in the first place and earned him a spot right where he never wanted to be.

His eyebrows rose as he read through the service record, seeing one example after another of how great of an officer his son had become, of instances where bold actions were needed and he had delivered. He had to re-read the line about breaking the warp ten barrier several times before the words actually set in. His son had done it. He had defied the laws of physics and done something no one had ever done before. He had assured himself a place in a record books for all time. Kids would someday learn about Thomas Paris in their history classes the way they learned about Chuck Yeager or Neil Armstrong or Zephram Cochrane. The thought made Owen's head spin.

Although curious about the other two personnel files, the admiral skipped them in favor of the file directly from the chief engineer, still wondering if it was some sort of mistake that it had been addressed to him. That notion was dispelled as soon as he caught the note attached to the data file:

_"To: Admiral Owen E. Paris, Starfleet Command. Dad—rank has its privileges. In our case, that means sneaking a personal file in the EMH's program. In yours, it means being the first in your quadrant to meet your granddaughter. Love, Tom, B'Elanna, and Ryanne."_ He blinked at the note, not quite able to comprehend the meaning of the words. Granddaughter? B'Elanna? _Ryanne?_ Suddenly realizing what those two personnel files must be, he switched back to them before opening the file. He had to shake his head in wonder at what he saw in the first. Only Tom could manage to be sent to the other side of the galaxy and run into the one woman he had visibly cared about, B'Elanna Torres. Like Tom's file, her picture looked as if it had been taken within the last year. Gone was the nineteen-year-old cadet who had covered up her fear with a defiant look as she sat in the courtroom at Starfleet Academy, waiting for a panel of admirals and captains to decide her fate. Gone was the challenge issued to the entire universe in her eyes. Gone was even the long curly hair that Linssay had so admired during that winter vacation in France. In the place of that cadet Paris remembered was a mature officer, dark hair straightened and neatly coiffed, a look of practiced professionalism on her face. "Rank: Lieutenant (jg) (promotable). Rank based on commissioned rank within the Klingon Defense Force, years in service, and position aboard _USS __Voyager_." Lieutenant junior grade promotable. Technically, that put her above Tom, which left Owen feeling strangely amused. He was a bit confused by her rank within the Defense Force, but figured that was best left for someone else to figure out. Peace between the Klingon Empire and the Federation was tenuous at best at the moment, and he didn't want to be the one rocking the boat, not when they were facing other problems on other fronts. "Position: Chief Engineer, _USS Voyager_." Not terribly surprising, considering her talents—and the personal note from the chief engineer, which was now making sense.

He finally opened the file and realized he was staring at a holovideo of some sort of ship gathering aboard _Voyager_. He transferred it to his desk console to get a larger view as Tom's voice drifted out. _"Where'd the birthday girl disappear to?"_ The camera scanned the room—likely _Voyager_'s mess hall—before falling on a small girl, thick dark curls in what was probably permanent disarray. She turned toward the camera as her face broke into a large grin, and Owen's breath caught as he felt a surge of pride at the grandchild he had never met. She was a beautiful child, with that curly hair and light ridges on her forehead, large green eyes and that smile. _Tom's smile_. He could remember seeing that grin on his son's face when he had been a toddler.

_"Say hi to Daddy, Ryanne."_ He recognized that voice as well, although it had been years since he had heard B'Elanna Torres speak. The holoimager panned out slightly as the woman—Owen's daughter-in-law—came into view, looking just like the image in her personnel file, but with a relaxed smile and casual off-duty tunic and pants.

_"Hi, Daddy,"_ Ryanne said dutifully, the grin still on her face as she attempted to run toward her father, behind the holoimager. She stumbled over her own feet, as toddlers did, and went sprawling onto the deck. Owen had to chuckle at the determined expression as she pulled herself back to her feet to try again. There was no doubt that she was Tom and B'Elanna's daughter, that was for sure. Ryanne's determination to take on the universe could have come from either.

_"Who's ready for cake?"_ Paris didn't recognize the voice, nor did he even know what species the man who came into view belonged to, but he did recognize birthday cake when he saw it, and apparently, Ryanne did, too. She changed course and barreled toward the man, but was caught by her mother before they could collide.

_"Tom, put the imager down and come control your daughter,"_ she said in an exasperated tone.

_"Here, Doc."_ The video jostled slightly as the imager changed hands, and then Tom came into view, and again, Owen's breath caught at the sudden emotions that surged within him. Just like in his personnel file, he looked older than Owen remembered, maybe weathered a bit by the lifetime of experiences that he had crammed into a few short years, but was looking relaxed in his off-duty clothes and that familiar quirky grin on his face. There was something else there, too: the obvious love and pride the man had for his family. His boy had finally and completely grown up to become a man.

The Tom on the video paused to give B'Elanna—_his wife—_a quick kiss before sweeping up his daughter and thrusting her overhead, earning him squeals of delight. _"Happy birthday, dollface," _he said as he lowered her back to the ground. Owen thought he remembered the nickname from one of Tom's old movies, but he would have to ask Alicia to be sure. They took a break from the dialogue for everyone gathered to sing a chorus of "Happy Birthday" to the small child.

_"Can you believe she's a year old already?"_ The camera turned to face the man who had spoken, a young Asian-looking man who waved the imager off with an embarrassed expression on his face. _"How much longer until she has a little brother or sister?"_ the man teased.

_"I don't know, Harry. We still haven't decided if we're keeping this one,"_ B'Elanna deadpanned. _"According to Klingon tradition, you have through their first year to decide if they're worthy to be raised or warriors or not. And there's still six more Standard months of the Klingon year."_

The man gaped. _"What?"_ he asked, his eyes wide in disbelief. B'Elanna turned to face Tom.

_"You're right. That's too easy,"_ she said to him.

_"Well, how am I supposed to know Klingon traditions?"_ the young officer protested. Tom laughed.

_"Harry, Harry, Harry...they're not barbarians,"_ he told him. _"Aside from their eating habits and tempers and rituals and—"_

_"Watch it, Tom,"_ B'Elanna said warningly. Owen saw his son grin and give her another kiss. He was struck by how happy and normal the whole gathering seemed to be—no moans about being so far from home, no visible damage to the ship from being so far from a repair station—they were just another crew on another ship, taking time to celebrate a milestone in the life of one of their own.

_"How much longer until we can expect to see her filling in for her father on the bridge?"_ Paris recognized the man who spoke as former Lt. Commander Chakotay, the Maquis captain Janeway had initially been sent after.

_"I don't think she quite has the manual dexterity for that yet,"_ Tom remarked with a grin. The furry alien began passing out pieces of what appeared to be blue cake. As expected, it wasn't long before Ryanne had smeared it all over her face, which made Tom smirk at the demonstration of his words. _"It'll be a couple of years yet."_

_"Maybe in the next seven years we'll scrounge up enough spare parts to assemble an S-type shuttle,"_ Captain Janeway commented with a small smile. Tom groaned good-naturedly.

_"Is there anyone in Starfleet who hasn't heard that story?"_ he moaned. Owen realized with a start that he had been so proud of his son's abilities to handle that ancient craft that he had told everyone he thought would listen.

_"I think it's time for a speech from the guest of honor,"_ the man behind the imager commented.

_"Doc, I think you're over-estimating her abilities. She's one. She's barely able to put two words together. I don't think it'll be much of a speech,"_ Tom commented.

_"Then maybe her father would like to give one in her stead?"_

Realizing he was trapped, Tom gave a short chuckle before nodding slightly. He raised a glass in a toast, and the others followed suit. _"To my beautiful and talented daughter, Ryanne Miral Paris, happy birthday. May you have many more to come that are just as happy. And to my dad, who I think is going to be _very_ surprised when he discovers that not only does he have a Paris granddaughter, but that she was born on his sixty-fourth birthday, happy birthday to you, too, wherever you are. And someday—and knowing the talents of my amazing wife, someday soon—we'll be celebrating those birthdays together back home."_

_"Hear, hear!" _everyone cheered before drinking to the toast.

"Hear, hear," Owen echoed softly, incredibly touched by the words. Tom was right; he was surprised. It was a day of surprises, and of gifts that he couldn't have even conceived of during his sixty-fifth birthday party three weeks before.

The announcer chimed on his door, and he did his best to straighten himself up before calling out, "Enter!" It slid open to reveal Commander Janine Marshall, his oldest daughter. He had forgotten that she was temporarily stationed at Starfleet Command while her son was undergoing tests at Starfleet Medical.

"Mom just commed me with the news," she said haltingly, the expression in her blue eyes a combination of excitement and hope and disbelief. "Is it true? Is _Voyager_ still out there? And Tom still alive?"

He nodded and felt a grin beginning to form on his face. "It's true," he told her, "all of that. And more." He gestured for her to come around to his side of the desk as he returned the holovid to the beginning. "Come over here and see what your little brother has been up to the last three years."


End file.
